Mycorrhizal Fungi as Ecofriendly Interventions for Crop Productivity

Crop production has declined over the years due to various reasons like lack of quality plantation, incident of insect and pest, climate change, and poor management of crops. Developing technology and newer approaches that are used in agriculture like excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers have increased the effect of abiotic stress on crop production and degradation of ecosystem. The changing scenarios warrant the adoption of ecofriendly crop management techniques in which biofertilizers interventions such as use of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi offers restorative solutions. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is a group of soil microorganism that shows symbiotic association with most of the plants and generally referred to as natural biofertilizer. They play critical role in plant nutrition uptake and also protect it from biotic and abiotic stress. AMF association with plant provides numerous benefits to crops like protection against drought stress, increase nitrogen fixation, protect from phytopathogens, and improving soil physical properties. Apart from abiotic stress, phytopathogenic infection in plants is a major cause of declined productivity. Nutrient immobilization along with water access provided by AMF can help to improve fast growth of the host plant making it more resilient to stress tolerance. Use of such beneficial group of microorganisms in development of consortial microbial inoculum offers technological prospects in agricultural productivity enhancement and eco-restoration of soil health.