The Effects of Mycorrhizal Symbiosis on Plant Development and Stress Tolerance

Dear Colleagues,

Beneficial interactions between plants and mycorrhizal fungi are part of natural ecosystems, facilitating access to mineral nutrients and improving tolerance to biotic and abiotic stressful environmental conditions. Most plants establish some kind of mycorrhizal interaction, including arbuscular mycorrhizas and ectomycorrhizas, which constitute the most important plant mutualistic interactions.

The demand for agricultural products is increasing but faces several challenges (e.g., in reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, influences due to extreme weather conditions). Novel approaches taking advantage of the interactions between plants and their symbiotic partners must be explored to achieve a more sustainable agriculture and forestry. This requires a deeper understanding on how mycorrhizas impact plant development and contribute to benefit their host plants, improving growth and tolerance to environmental stress or plant pathogens. Questions, such as how mycorrhizal symbiosis affects host plant development, how mycorrhizal fungal communities are affected by biotic/abiotic stresses, how root exudation under stress affects mycorrhizal interactions, or what are the molecular mechanisms underlying increased tolerance of mycorrhizal plants to stress, should be addressed in this Special Issue. Therefore, we welcome articles (original research papers, perspectives, hypotheses, opinions, reviews, modeling approaches, and methods) covering all aspects of mycorrhizal biology related to plant development and the ability to confer increased biotic (e.g., pests and pathogens) and abiotic stress tolerance (e.g., drought, soil salinity, or extreme temperature) including studies using biochemistry, physiology, and molecular (genes, proteins) approaches, genomics studies comprising transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and plant microbiomes, and field trials using native species and/or crop plants or trees, among others.      

Dr. Mónica Sebastiana
Dr. Rui Malhó
Guest Editors

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