Arbuscular Mycorrhizae and Mycorrhizae Helper Organism—A Synergistic Movement Towards Soil and Crop Sustainability

The world is in verge of facing tremendous challenges to provide sufficient food for the increasing population in next decades. To maintain the sustainable crop production, maintaining soil sustainability is the only way. As in conventional agricultural field, continuous use of synthetic fertilizers and poor nutrient cycling affect soil sustainability in long run. In this regard, use of rhizospheric microbes including arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and plant growth promoting microbes (PGPM) could be proven as an important technology in agriculture. Most of the PGPM are also mycorrhizae helper organism (MHO). They belong to various fungal and bacterial taxa promoting nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, and producing plant growth promoting substances and inducing plant defence. AM and MHO are often interdependent and helps in improving the plant growth, stress tolerance and maintaining soil health. In addition to farm land, such micro-remediation may also improve the productivity of waste and polluted lands and maintain the production rate. This technique could be a viable option to save the global fertilizer and agrochemicals demand, water and energy required for their production which further helps in biodiversity conservation and reduction of emission of greenhouse gases and related health hazards.