Salinity Stress and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis in Plants

Abstract

Soil salinity is one of the main abiotic stresses, which restrict the plant growth and development, and therefore causes major threat to crop productivity. To minimize the crop loss, plant biologists are searching alternatives to develop salt-tolerant crop plants through different means such as plant breeding and genetic engineering. These approaches are successful and presently under use in developed countries but are too costly for the developing countries. In the present scenarios, various methods are utilized all over the globe to mitigate the adverse effect of salinity. One of the commonly used methods is to use beneficial bacteria and fungi that colonize with the plant roots and ultimately alleviate the salinity stress in plants. Among them, application of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi has been found to be very effective in mitigating the salinity stress and also improves the crop yield. Various parameters were thoroughly studied and reported in the literature and have demonstrated positive effect in plants subjected to AM fungi under different environmental stress including saline stress. This is attributed to increased antioxidative activities, osmolytes and osmoprotectants in tolerant plants. Deficiency of mineral content in plants under salt stress is compensated by the use of AM fungi as the hyphae of AM fungi acquire minerals in abundance and thereby prevent the plants against deleterious effects of salinity stress. Efficient use of AM fungi can bring the wonders in the field of agriculture with improved yield of crop under salt stress and soil health. Besides this, identification of novel genes that regulate and maintain the biosynthesis of proline and water status in plant cells will help plant researchers to utilize this beneficial interaction in more sustainable ways. The chapter will throw light on the use of AM fungal association in alleviating salt stress in plants and how to exploit this for improved productivity under growth-limited conditions.