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A fungal endophyte strategy for mitigating the effect of salt and drought stress on plant growth

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Abstract

Fungal endophytes grow symbiotically inside plants, where some strains promote plant growth and survival under particular abiotic stresses. We colonized tomato plants with systemic (also called class 2) fungal endophytes isolated from plants naturally growing in salinized soil. We studied the effect of these strains on plant tolerance to NaCl and drought. Endophyte-colonized plants exposed to NaCl or drought had higher root and shoot biomass, better water-use efficiency, and higher photosynthetic efficiency than non-colonized plants. Endophyte-colonized plants also had lower reactive oxygen species content, implying a mechanism for stress tolerance. Our findings indicate that systemic fungal endophytes isolated from pioneer plants on salinized soil have the potential to confer tolerance to agriculturally and horticulturally important plants grown in arid environments.

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Abbreviations

RO:

Reverse Osmosis

ROS:

Reactive Oxygen Species

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Acknowledgments

We thank Prof Jim Basinger, Dr. Zakia Boubakir, Liz Cronin, Mariam Goubran, Solmaz Irani, Ankur Jamwal, Robert Mercado, Marlynn Mierau, Dominic Olver, Tim Repas, and Huimin Zhang for their help at different stages of this project. We thank Mosaic Potash (especially Kathlene Jacobson) for access to their sites. We thank Prof Jim Basinger, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Mosaic Potash, and the University of Saskatchewan for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, 112 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N 5E2, Canada

    Kumkum Azad & Susan Kaminskyj

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  1. Kumkum Azad
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  2. Susan Kaminskyj
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Correspondence to Susan Kaminskyj.

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Presented at the 8th Congress of the International Symbiosis Society, July 12-18, 2015, Lisbon, Portugal

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Azad, K., Kaminskyj, S. A fungal endophyte strategy for mitigating the effect of salt and drought stress on plant growth. Symbiosis 68, 73–78 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13199-015-0370-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13199-015-0370-y

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