Calorespirometry as an innovative tool to test arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal functionality under temperature stress

For more information, feel free to contact Amaia Nogales .

(Duration: April 2014 to April 2015)

Low temperature is considered one of the primary causes of crop loss worldwide. Plant cold stress response can be improved by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) symbiosis, and besides, including AMF in plant breeding programs could strongly benefit low chemical input for sustainable agriculture. Nevertheless, the use of AMF as a strategy to increase plant cold tolerance is a rather unexplored area. One of the reasons for low research efforts in this area is that field trials to select plant genotypes with beneficial responses to AMF in terms of increased low temperature tolerance are complex, and therefore highly expensive and laborious. Adequate strategies for phenotyping and molecular marker development are required to narrow the pool of successful genotypes before field testing and to make the breeding process more efficient. In this project three step strategy will be explored to evaluate the suitableness of AMF inoculation to increase plant cold tolerance:

1) the use of functional markers(FM) to identify and select cold tolerant/susceptible genotypes.

2) the inoculation of susceptible genotypes with AMF as an strategy to increase their cold tolerance.

3) the use of calorespirometry to identify the most functional combinations of plant genotype-AMF isolate that could be later tested on the field.

The newly developed technique, calorespirometry, has demonstrated a good potential for preliminary screening of new genotypes based on their temperature adaptation and tolerance (Nogales et al. 2013, Nogales et al. in prep). This methodology will enable to detect differences in respiratory metabolism and growth characteristics among carrot genotypes in relation to their mycorrhizal status and cold stress, and will enable to select the most functional combination of AMF isolate and plant genotype for increased cold tolerance.