Isolation and mass culturing of AM fungi and their subsequent performance on pea crop grown on salt affected soils of Varanasi district Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Plant growth and productivity is adversely affected by nature s exasperation in the form of various abiotic stress factors. Plants are frequently exposed to a plethora of stress conditions such as salinity, drought, heat, flooding and heavy metal toxicity. Among these stresses, salt affected soil is an ever-present threat to agriculture system because it limits plant growth and productivity. The responses to salt stress comprise an array of changes at the molecular, biochemical, and physiological levels. In India, salt affected lands accounts for 6.73 million ha, which suffers huge economic losses due to declined productivity. Sodic soils have occupied 3.77 M ha covering 66% of the total salt affected area. These soils are essentially located in the Indo-Gangetic plain, arid and semi-arid region in Western and Central India and the Peninsular region in the Southern India. Further the soil sodicity is a major concern of the Indo-Gangetic plain affecting the productivity and livelihood of the inhabitants. newlineTo deal with salt affected soils, traditionally physical (profile inversion, deep ploughing, sub-soiling), and chemical (gypsum and other various substances) amelioration techniques are available. However, these physical and chemical approaches are attractive, but they have some practical limitation such as increasing cost of chemical amendments, availability of fresh water, cumbersome physical process etc. So under these circumstances, growing plants with their natural symbiotic partner like arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can be proved as best alternative. newlineArbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi belonging to the phylum Glomeromycota are ubiquitous and indispensable root symbionts of more than 90% of vascular plants and over 80% of all extant terrestrial plants. AM fungi are biological approach which widely exists in salt affected environments improving performance of plants by alleviating salt stress.