Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi enhance active ingredients of medicinal plants: a quantitative analysis

Abstract

Medicinal plants are invaluable resources for mankind and play a crucial role in combating diseases. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are widely recognized for enhancing the production of medicinal active ingredients in medicinal plants. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive understanding regarding the quantitative effects of AMF on the accumulation of medicinal active ingredients. Here we conducted a comprehensive global analysis using 233 paired observations to investigate the impact of AMF inoculation on the accumulation of medicinal active ingredients. This study revealed that AMF inoculation significantly increased the contents of medicinal active ingredients by 27%, with a particularly notable enhancement observed in flavonoids (68%) and terpenoids (53%). Furthermore, the response of medicinal active ingredients in belowground organs (32%) to AMF was more pronounced than that in aboveground organs (18%). Notably, the AMF genus Rhizophagus exhibited the strongest effect in improving the contents of medicinal active ingredients, resulting in an increase of over 50% in both aboveground and belowground organs. Additionally, the promotion of medicinal active ingredients by AMF was attributed to improvements in physiological factors, such as chlorophyll, stomatal conductance and net photosynthetic rate. Collectively, this research substantially advanced our comprehension of the pivotal role of AMF in improving the medicinal active ingredients of plants and provided valuable insights into the potential mechanisms driving these enhancements.

Improvement of Panax notoginseng saponin accumulation triggered by methyl jasmonate under arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

“…AMF are a class of ancient fungi that can form a mutualistic symbiosis with over 80% of plant species roots in natural and agricultural systems and are mainly classified as Glomeromycota, including Diversisporales, Archaeosporales, Glomerales and Paraglomerales ( Camargo-Ricalde, 2002 ; Malar et al., 2022 ; Fan et al., 2023 ). Increasing evidence has shown that AMF play key roles in the growth and accumulation of secondary metabolites in medicinal plants ( Kumar et al., 2021 ; Ran et al., 2022 ; Zhao et al., 2022 ; Yuan et al., 2023 ; Cao et al., 2023b ). The contents of many active substances increased under the inoculation of AMF, e.g., artemisinin from Artemisia annua L ( Mandal et al., 2015 ; Domokos et al., 2018 ), glycyrrhizin and liquiritin from Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch ( Xie et al., 2018 , 2019 ), aloe emodin from Polygonum cuspidatum Sieb.…”

Evaluating the Interaction between Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) and Plant Pathogens

“…The crucial role of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) associations in plant nutrient uptake has been widely recognized for a long time. The advantageous symbiotic relationships between plants and AMF can exert substantial influence on plant health and productivity [1,2]. While there has been significant research on the benefits of AMF for plant nutrition and growth, the impact they may have on plant disease resistance is a relatively new field of investigation.…”