A Legume Host Benefits More from Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Than a Grass Host in the Presence of a Root Hemiparasitic Plant.

Xiaolin Sui,Kaiyun Guan,Ruijuan Xue,Airong Li,Yan Chen

doi:10.3390/microorganisms10020440

Xiaolin Sui, Kaiyun Guan + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms10020440

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Abstract

In nature, most plants parasitized by root hemiparasites are also colonized by mutualistic arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, highlighting the prevalence of this tripartite interaction. AM colonization is generally found to improve the growth of parasitized legumes but has little impact on grass hosts parasitized by root hemiparasites, and the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. In this study, we conducted a pot experiment to test the influence of AM fungus (Glomus mosseae) on the growth and photosynthesis of leguminous Trifolium repens and gramineous Elymus nutans in the presence of a root hemiparasitic plant (Pedicularis kansuensis). The results showed that inoculation with AM fungi significantly improved the growth performance of parasitized legumes via enhancing their nutrient status and photosynthetic capacity, even though a larger P. kansuensis parasitized the legume host in the AM treatment. In contrast, AM colonization slightly improved the shoot DW of grass hosts by suppressing haustoria formation and the growth of P. kansuensis. Our results demonstrated that legume hosts benefit more from AM inoculation than grass hosts in the presence of hemiparasitic plants, and set out the various mechanisms. This study provides new clues for parsing the tritrophic interaction of AM fungi, parasitic plants, and host plants.

Highlights

Root hemiparasitic plants are globally important, as they are widely distributed in almost all ecosystems and have profound effects on community productivity, community structures, community diversity, and nutrient cycling [1,2,3,4]
The Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) colonization level of P. kansuensis was lower in the legumeparasite association than in the grass-parasite association (Table 1)
We found that the total the P. kansuensis parasitizing legume host was higher in the AM treatment than the NM

Summary

Introduction

Root hemiparasitic plants are globally important, as they are widely distributed in almost all ecosystems and have profound effects on community productivity, community structures, community diversity, and nutrient cycling [1,2,3,4]. Despite their normal appearance with green leaves and branching roots, root hemiparasitic plants depend largely on host plants to acquire nutrients via parasitic organs called haustoria [5,6]. A majority of studies have investigated the effect of abiotic factors (e.g., nutrient supply, water availability, etc.) [7,10,11,12,13] on regulating the impact of hemiparasite on host performance, but only a few studies have addressed the roles played by microorganisms (e.g., arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi) [14,15].

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