Abstract
The development of endophyte inoculants for agricultural crops has been bedevilled by the twin problems of a lack of reliability and consistency, with a consequent lack of belief among end users in the efficacy of such treatments. We have developed a successful research pipeline for the production of a reliable, consistent and environmentally targeted fungal endophyte seed-delivered inoculant for barley cultivars. Our approach was developed de novo from an initial concept to source candidate endophyte inoculants from a wild relative of barley, Hordeum murinum (wall barley). A careful screening and selection procedure and extensive controlled environment testing of fungal endophyte strains, followed by multi-year field trials has resulted in the validation of an endophyte consortium suitable for barley crops grown on relatively dry sites. Our approach can be adapted for any crop or environment, provided that the set of first principles we have developed is followed. Here, we report how we developed the successful pipeline for the production of an economically viable fungal endophyte inoculant for barley cultivars.
Highlights
The use of microorganisms to improve agricultural crop performance has a long history, but only in the last few decades have we been able to describe in any detail how bacteria, fungi, algae and protozoans interact with plants to enhance desired traits [1,2,3]
A significantly greater number of different endophytes were recovered from roots on the malt extract plus whole plant extract medium than any of the other media tested. These results indicated that different media are suitable either for the initial recovery and isolation of fungal root endophytes or for increasing fungal biomass and inducing earlier sporulation
Many promising scientific discoveries do not make a successful transition to commerce, for any number of reasons, while some discoveries happen almost by accident [61]
Summary
The use of microorganisms to improve agricultural crop performance has a long history, but only in the last few decades have we been able to describe in any detail how bacteria, fungi, algae and protozoans interact with plants to enhance desired traits [1,2,3]. It is the plant that is the ultimate arbiter of how and when these microorganisms are incorporated into the functional plant microbiome, often in an unpredictable fashion [8,9] It is the goal of all plant-microbiome research to understand and use these relationships in the most effective way, but we are still some way from obtaining this full understanding [10,11]. We aimed to remove the inconsistency from endophyte application in field crops by targeting a single crop, barley, as our model plant, and testing the efficacy of endophyte strains under various environmental stresses, culminating in extensive field trials [30,31,32,33,34,35] With this field validation can we say with any confidence that a microbial inoculant really “works” [36]. We will discuss a set of first principles that are important for success, and we will outline future research directions that will increase the portfolio of endophyte inoculants and expand the scope of target crop species
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