A Database on Mycorrhizal Traits of Chinese Medicinal Plants.

Menghan Zhang,Jiakai Gao,Shan Zhang,Zhaoyong Shi

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.840343

Abstract

The mycorrhizal traits of plants have been widely reported based on different scales or plant functional groups. To better utilize mycorrhizae to improve the cultivation yield and active ingredient accumulation of medicinal plants, a database of medicinal plant mycorrhizal characteristics is needed. A database on mycorrhizal traits including mycorrhizal type or status of Chinese medicinal plant species was assembled. In this study, the mycorrhizal type or status of a total of 3,230 medicinal plants was presented. Among them, the mycorrhizal traits of 1,321 species were ascertained. These medicinal plants had three mycorrhizal statuses, both single mycorrhiza (SM) and multi-mycorrhiza (MM) contained four mycorrhizal types. The majority of medicinal plants were obligatorily symbiotic with mycorrhizal fungi with 926 (70.10%) species. The most widespread mycorrhizal type is AM, which is associated with 842 medicinal plant species (90.93% of mycorrhiza has an obligatorily symbiotic relationship with Chinese medicinal plants). Another broadly studied mycorrhizal type is ECM, which is associated with 15 medicinal plant species. This study is the first exclusive database on mycorrhizal traits of medicinal plants, which provides both mycorrhizal type and status. This database provides valuable resources for identifying the mycorrhizal information of medicinal plants and enriching the theory of mycorrhizal traits, which will greatly benefit the production or management of medicinal plants.

Highlights

One of the key innovations in land plants is forming associations with mycorrhizal fungi (Soudzilovskaia et al, 2020)
We classified the mycorrhizal types of Chinese medicinal plants as follows: the mycorrhizal type of species obligatorily associated with typical arbuscular structure was classified as arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) type, and the mycorrhizal type of species facultatively associated with AM was classified as AM + NM type, according to the method employed by Akhmetzhanova et al (2012) in a study on a mycorrhizal intensity database of 3,000 vascular plant species from the former Soviet Union and Wang and Qiu (2006) in a study on the phylogenetic distribution and evolution of mycorrhizae in land plants
The mycorrhizal information of a total of 3,230 medicinal plants was searched in China (Figure 1A)

Summary

Introduction

One of the key innovations in land plants is forming associations with mycorrhizal fungi (Soudzilovskaia et al, 2020). Mycorrhizae are associations between mycorrhizal fungi and plant roots, which are widely found in terrestrial ecosystems (Davison et al, 2015; Sizonenko et al, 2020). Depending on the presence or absence of mycorrhizae, mycorrhizal statuses are classified into obligatorily mycorrhizal (OM), facultatively mycorrhizal (FM), and non-mycorrhizal (NM). Species that can form mycorrhizae in all habitats are called obligatorily mycorrhizal, whereas species that can form mycorrhizae in one habitat but not in another are called facultatively mycorrhizal, and species that cannot form mycorrhizae in all habitats are called non-mycorrhizal (Wang and Qiu, 2006). Some plants have multiple mycorrhizal types (Smith and Read, 2008; Soudzilovskaia et al, 2020)

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