Some fungi grow within plant parts and live as endosymbiont without causing apparent disease and enhance host growth, carrying defense response, nutrient acquisition, decrease biotic and abiotic stress, used as biofertilizer, also great role in medicine industry, known as endophytic fungi. Here five different fungi strains have been isolated from different plant parts of Plumbago zeylanica Linn. from the Departmental garden of Botany department of Burdwan university. These fungi strains show different plant growth traits like IAA production, Nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, production of ammonia, polysaccharide, HCN, organic acid. These strains also can tolerate from different concentrations of salt. Among all fungal strains SL4 was identified as Colletotrichum sp. by 18S rRNA gene sequencing and gave the best result in most of the PGP traits of the fungal strains. Considering all these properties, SL4 strain can be used in agricultural field for cultivation of crops or in different nurseries as phytostimulator as well as biofertilizer.

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Endophytes are ubiquitous and grow in plant tissues without causing any harmful effects to the host. They include different groups of microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes. Along with the host plants, the existing endophytes also co-evolve after a long relationship between them. Host plant-endophyte interaction is similar to that of plant growth promoting microbes as they induce the growth of the host plant and increase resilience against biotic and abiotic stresses. The interaction of plant endophytes at the molecular level and the effect of endophytes on host gene expression is a new field of study and are still rarely explored. Endophytes act as a promising resource of many invaluable bioactive secondary metabolites. Some of these bioactive compounds include alkaloids, polyphenols, sterols, xanthones, terpenoids, flavones, coumarins, polyketides, quinones, saponins, tannins, benzopyrones, dibenzofurans. These secondary metabolites are beneficial for agriculture, industrial and pharmacological purposes. As endophytes have beneficial effects in sustainable agriculture, plant disease management, pharmaceuticals, industry and environmental management in an eco-friendly way, thus improving the strategy of application of endophytes as biological agents in every aspect of our life is a very challenging field of research. Our aim in this present review is to focus on plant-endophyte interactions and their various dimensions in order to address some future possibilities for expediting the bioactive secondary metabolite production.

In the present study, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) producing plant growth promoting fungus was isolated from rice field of Purba Bardhaman district, West Bengal, India. Among the isolated 6 strains, AP2 (Aspergillus fumigatus) was selected as best-performing plant growth promoting fungal strain as it was an efficient indole-3-acetic acid producer as well as exhibits different plant growth promoting ability viz, phosphate solubilization, siderophore production, ammonia and hydrogen cyanide production etc. Media and different growth conditions (pH, temperature, concentration of sodium chloride) were optimized for augmentation of the indole-3-acetic acid production. The genus of the selected isolate AP2 was identified as Aspergillus fumigatus both by 18S rDNA sequence-based homology and MALDI-TOF analyses of ribosomal protein. Plant growth promoting ability of Aspergillus fumigatus has been confirmed by measuring different morphological and biochemical growth parameters in Trigonella foenum-graecum L. So, AP2 (Aspergillus fumigatus) can be considered as novel plant growth promoting fungal strain that can be applied as bio-inoculants on agricultural field.