ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Symbiotic Interactions
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1592931
This article is part of the Research TopicMechanisms Behind Stress Tolerance Induced by Mycorrhizal SymbiosesView all 8 articles
The concentration-independent effect of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on the tolerance of green foxtail to vanadium stress
Provisionally accepted
- Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) show significant potential for improving plant tolerance to vanadium (V) stress. However, the pattern and physiological mechanisms behind this effect are not fully understood. To investigate this, we used green foxtail (Setaria viridis) as a test plant and inoculated this plant with (+AMF) or without (-AMF) Rhizophagus irregularis. These +AMF and -AMF plants were grown in soils with low (150 mg kg -1 ), medium (500 mg kg -1 ), and high (1000 mg kg -1 ) V pollution levels. Our results showed root colonization of +AMF plants, whereas no such colonization was observed in -AMF plants. Compared to -AMF plants, +AMF plants showed a more organized arrangement of leaf cells, intact chloroplasts, fewer starch granules, and an intact nuclear membrane. AMF increased leaf chlorophyll a concentration by 49% under high V pollution and that of chlorophyll b by 18% under low V pollution and 36% at medium soil V levels. AMF reduced the concentration of malondialdehyde (MDA) by 36%-40% in leaves and increased the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) by 20%-84%, catalase (CAT) by 5%-13%, and peroxidase (POD) by 12%-16%. +AMF plants exhibited 13%-32% greater plant height, 17%-23% longer root length, 42%-78% higher shoot biomass, 61%-73% greater root biomass, 16% increased root-to-shoot ratio (at high V pollution), and 7%-13% elevated leaf phosphorus concentration than -AMF plants. Furthermore, +AMF shoots had 16%-30% lower V concentrations than -AMF plants while +AMF roots exhibited 52%-73% smaller V concentrations than the -AMF control. These results suggest that AMF increase plant tolerance to V stress by protecting leaf ultrastructure, increasing chlorophyll concentration, reducing oxidative damage as well as biomass-driven V dilution and these effects of AMF were independent of soil V concentrations.
Keywords: heavy metal, Phytoremediation, Chlorophyll, ultrastructure, antioxidant system, AMF
Received: 13 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Dong, Qi, Wang, Xi, Cao, Shah and You. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shujuan Zhang, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.