The Potential of Trichoderma, SynCom and Their Metabolites for Enhancing Crop Yield and Resistance

A special issue of Journal of Fungi (ISSN 2309-608X). This special issue belongs to the section "Fungi in Agriculture and Biotechnology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 515

Special Issue Editor

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Trichoderma and its metabolites have been developed into biofungicides or biostimulants worldwide. However, with the development of microbiome and metabolome sciences, as well as their application techniques, more potential uses of Trichoderma strains and their functional metabolites have been explored in the substantial improvement of crop yield and resistance against a broad range of plant pathogens and pest insects. For instance, SynCom—composed of Trichoderma strains or with other kinds of microbes—has indicated excellent resilience to the complicated stress farming conditions and effective control of a broader range of plant diseases and pest insects. Products prepared with Trichoderma functional metabolites revealed a longer shelf life than Trichoderma live cells during transportation and storage, which overcomes the genetic drawbacks of Trichoderma live cells easily losing activity under stressful environments; additionally, Trichoderma metabolite products also show a stable and synergistic performance in the control of plant diseases, particularly in relation to their application combined with agro-chemicals such as chemical pesticide. The synergistic action between chemicals and Trichoderma metabolites may be attributed to their quite different target sites in pathogens and pest insects. Furthermore, the combined use of Trichoderma live cells with functional metabolites has also been demonstrated to be an alternative to utilize their advantages in the control of plant diseases and crop yield improvement. Overall, the development of synthetic community products based on Trichoderma strains, as well as functional metabolite products, could provide potential ways to promote Trichoderma application in the agricultural industry.

Prof. Dr. Jie Chen
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • trichoderma
  • functional metabolites
  • microbiome
  • metabolome

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

12 pages, 1929 KiB  
Article
Trichoderma asperellum 22043: Inoculation Promotes Salt Tolerance of Tomato Seedlings Through Activating the Antioxidant System and Regulating Stress-Resistant Genes
by Guangyan Hu, Zhongjuan Zhao, Yanli Wei, Jindong Hu, Yi Zhou, Jishun Li and Hetong Yang
J. Fungi 2025, 11(4), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/jof11040253 - 26 Mar 2025
Viewed by 316
Abstract
Salt stress poses a major threat to plant growth, and breeding for salt-tolerant varieties is not always successful to ameliorate this threat. In the present experiment, the effect of T. asperellum 22043 inoculation on the growth of salt-stressed tomatoes and the mechanisms by [...] Read more.
Salt stress poses a major threat to plant growth, and breeding for salt-tolerant varieties is not always successful to ameliorate this threat. In the present experiment, the effect of T. asperellum 22043 inoculation on the growth of salt-stressed tomatoes and the mechanisms by which it improves salt tolerance were investigated. It was observed that tomato plants treated with T. asperellum 22043 spore suspension under salt tress (50 and 100 mM NaCl) consistently exhibited higher seeds germination, seedling survival rate, plant height, and chlorophyll content, but lower malondialdehyde and proline contents than the plants treated without the Trichoderma. T. asperellum 22043 effectively improved the stress resistance of tomato through regulating the transcriptional levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging enzyme gene expression to modulate the activity of ROS scavenging enzymes and the expression of the genes related to transporter and aquaporin to maintain the balance of cell Na+. In conclusion, T. asperellum 22043 can enhance tomato seedlings’ salt tolerance by activating the antioxidant system and regulating the expression of stress-resistant genes. Full article
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