Mass production of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal inoculum
(2010)
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- Authors
- Supervisors
- Declerck, Stéphane
- Abstract
- (en) The diversity and abundance of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in agricultural soils is often relatively low. Their utilization as part of an integrated agricultural approach to decrease agrochemical inputs thus needs the mass production of high quality AM fungal inoculum. Such production is however currently still complicated and costly. In addition, the ecology of AM fungi remains faintly understood and necessitates further research. This would allow the optimisation of AM fungal inoculum production and could assure their appropriate use and safe introduction into the field. Two new in vitro plant-based cultivation systems for AM fungi were developed during this thesis. The first system allowed the fast colonization of young plantlets, based on their root growth in an actively growing AM hyphal network that was extending from a adult mycorrhized donor plant. Thousands of spores were produced per newly mycorrhized plant in a few weeks time after these plants was transferred onto a fresh culture medium. These plants thus represented a promising starter inoculum to initiate the mass production of AM fungi and were subsequently used in an innovative low-cost in vitro cultivation system. This second system, a semi-hydroponic plant-based bioreactor for the production of AM fungi, consisted of a sterilised growth tube connected at both extremities to flexible tubings to circulate the liquid culture medium. A first test demonstrated the potential of the system for the production of AM fungal propagules. AM fungal ecology under plant-stress (i.e. defoliation) conditions was also investigated. We confirmed that two species belonging to phylogenetically distant genera (i.e. Scutellospora and Glomus) differed in their life history strategy (LHS). Repeated defoliation of Medicago truncatula revealed that S. reticulata more closely resembles K-strategists than r-strategists, and vice versa for G. intraradices. Such differences may influence inoculum production and its subsequent effectiveness in the field and is thus requesting the selection of adequate AM fungi.
- Affiliations
Citations
IJdo, M. L. (2010). Mass production of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal inoculum. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/131068