The Response of Spring Wheat Cultivars to Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Colonization under Salinity Stresses

Abstract

Wheat is an important crop, playing inevitable roles in human life, ranging from major food resource to raw material for biofuel. However, due to the dramatically reduced available arable areas and increasingly severe abiotic and biotic stresses, wheat production nowadays faces extreme challenges.. Many approaches have been explored to increase wheat yield including development of new cultivars. One of the most promising approaches is the application of the naturally existent arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM), a mutualistic symbiosis originated over 400 million years ago. AM have long been known to form mutualistic symbiosis with various plants to enhance yield production and to improve stress tolerance, especially drought and salinity. But the benefits vary among AM strains and plant species. Therefore, the objective of the study was to investigate the influence of four AM strains colonized on four selected spring wheat varieties under three salt concentrations (0, 50, 100 mmol/L). The results demonstrated that wheat inoculated with arbuscular mycorrhizal strains Funneliformis mosseae and Rhizoglomusirregulare mitigated yield losses caused by increased salinity stresses as well as strengthened root growth in comparison with non-inoculated plant controls. Salinity stress, however, had non-significant negative effects on most variables, except for grain yield, root surface area and root dry weight, in which a significant decrease was observed in root surface area and root dry weight with the increasing of saline concentration.