Arbuscular Mycorrhizas and Stress Tolerance of Plants

This book reviews the potential mechanisms in arbuscular mycorrhizas (AMs), in the hope that this can help arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) to be more used efficiently as a biostimulant to enhance stress tolerance in the host plants. AMF, as well as plants, are often exposed to all or many of the abiotic and biotic stresses, including extreme temperatures, pH, drought, water-logging, toxic metals and soil pathogens. Studies have indicated a quick response to these stresses involving several mechanisms, such as root morphological modification, reactive oxygen species change, osmotic adjustment, direct absorption of water by extraradical hyphae, up-regulated expression of relevant stressed genes, glomalin-related soil protein release, etc. The underlying complex, multi-dimensional strategy is involved in morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular processes. The AMF responses are often associated with homeostatic regulation of the internal and external environment, and are therefore critical for plant health, survival and restoration in native ecosystems and good soil structure.

Qiang-Sheng Wu is a professor at the College of Horticulture and Gardening, Yangtze University and an administrative direction at the Institute of Root Biology, Yangtze University. He also serves as the invited professor in the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Kralove.

His research interest is primarily in the signalling communication by common mycorrhizal network, the functioning and evaluation of glomalin-related soil protein, the physiol-molecular mechanisms about mycorrhiza-enhanced tolerance of drought stress and salt stress, and the relationship between mycorrhizas and root morphology or root hairs in plants, especially citrus plants.

He has published 70 papers as the first author or corresponding author indexed by SCI data and completed work on the book titled “Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Research and Application of Horticultural Plants” by Science Press. He serves as the invited editors to review manuscripts from ~20 popular journals. He has also been awarded the Fourth SCOPUS Young Research Award.