Arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis: A strategy for mitigating the impacts of climate change on tropical legume crops
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-1-2022
Abstract
Climate change is likely to have severe impacts on food security in the topics as these regions of the world have both the highest human populations and narrower climatic niches, which reduce the diversity of suitable crops. Legume crops are of particular importance to food security, supplying dietary protein for humans both directly and in their use for feed and forage. Other than the rhizobia associated with legumes, soil microbes, in particular arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), can mitigate the effects of biotic and abiotic stresses, offering an important complementary measure to protect crop yields. This review presents current knowledge on AMF, highlights their beneficial role, and explores the potential for application of AMF in mitigating abiotic and biotic challenges for tropical legumes. Due to the relatively little study on tropical legume species compared to their temperate growing counterparts, much further research is needed to determine how similar AMF-plant interactions are in tropical legumes, which AMF species are optimal for agricultural deployment and especially to identify anaerobic AMF species that could be used to mitigate flood stress in tropical legume crop farming. These opportunities for research also require international cooperation and support, to realize the promise of tropical legume crops to contribute to future food security.
Keywords
Abiotic stress, Arbuscular mycorrhizae, Biotic stress, Food security, Glomeromycota, Leguminosae, Stress mitigation
Divisions
InstituteofBiologicalSciences,cebar
Funders
University of Malaya Impact-Oriented Interdisciplinary Research Grant Programme (Grant No: IIRG002C-2020FNW)
Publication Title
Plants-Basel
Volume
11
Issue
21
Publisher
MDPI
Publisher Location
ST ALBAN-ANLAGE 66, CH-4052 BASEL, SWITZERLAND