Symbiosis of Plants with Mycorrhizal and Endophytic Fungi

Abstract

It has long been known that plants and microorganisms coexist. Thus, in the rootsof vascular plants, there are a great variety of fungi (arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, darkseptate endophytes fungi (DSE) and other endophytes) establishing different types ofrelationships. These fungi can grow in biotrophic, saprophytic and even parasitic waysand often overlap functionally and ecologically with other soil fungi, such as saprotrophs,facultative or obligate pathogens. Due to this great heterogeneity of behavior, they havemany interactions with their hosts. To facilitate the understanding of such interactions, thistopic can be analyzed from four main points of view.