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      The Potential Role of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi in the Restoration of Degraded Lands

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          Abstract

          Experiences worldwide reveal that degraded lands restoration projects achieve little success or fail. Hence, understanding the underlying causes and accordingly, devising appropriate restoration mechanisms is crucial. In doing so, the ever-increasing aspiration and global commitments in degraded lands restoration could be realized. Here we explain that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) biotechnology is a potential mechanism to significantly improve the restoration success of degraded lands. There are abundant scientific evidences to demonstrate that AMF significantly improve soil attributes, increase above and belowground biodiversity, significantly improve tree/shrub seedlings survival, growth and establishment on moisture and nutrient stressed soils. AMF have also been shown to drive plant succession and may prevent invasion by alien species. The very few conditions where infective AMF are low in abundance and diversity is when the soil erodes, is disturbed and is devoid of vegetation cover. These are all common features of degraded lands. Meanwhile, degraded lands harbor low levels of infective AMF abundance and diversity. Therefore, the successful restoration of infective AMF can potentially improve the restoration success of degraded lands. Better AMF inoculation effects result when inocula are composed of native fungi instead of exotics, early seral instead of late seral fungi, and are consortia instead of few or single species. Future research efforts should focus on AMF effect on plant community primary productivity and plant competition. Further investigation focusing on forest ecosystems, and carried out at the field condition is highly recommended. Devising cheap and ethically widely accepted inocula production methods and better ways of AMF in situ management for effective restoration of degraded lands will also remain to be important research areas.

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          Most cited references110

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          The strategy of ecosystem development.

          E P Odum (1969)
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            Functioning of mycorrhizal associations along the mutualism-parasitism continuum

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              Phylogenetic distribution and evolution of mycorrhizas in land plants.

              A survey of 659 papers mostly published since 1987 was conducted to compile a checklist of mycorrhizal occurrence among 3,617 species (263 families) of land plants. A plant phylogeny was then used to map the mycorrhizal information to examine evolutionary patterns. Several findings from this survey enhance our understanding of the roles of mycorrhizas in the origin and subsequent diversification of land plants. First, 80 and 92% of surveyed land plant species and families are mycorrhizal. Second, arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) is the predominant and ancestral type of mycorrhiza in land plants. Its occurrence in a vast majority of land plants and early-diverging lineages of liverworts suggests that the origin of AM probably coincided with the origin of land plants. Third, ectomycorrhiza (ECM) and its derived types independently evolved from AM many times through parallel evolution. Coevolution between plant and fungal partners in ECM and its derived types has probably contributed to diversification of both plant hosts and fungal symbionts. Fourth, mycoheterotrophy and loss of the mycorrhizal condition also evolved many times independently in land plants through parallel evolution.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Microbiol
                Front Microbiol
                Front. Microbiol.
                Frontiers in Microbiology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-302X
                26 July 2016
                2016
                : 7
                : 1095
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Forest and Range Land Biodiversity Conservation Directorate, Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
                [2] 2Department of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management, Addis Ababa University Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
                [3] 3Department of Land Resources Management and Environmental Protection, Mekelle University Mekelle, Ethiopia
                [4] 4Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences Ås, Norway
                Author notes

                Edited by: Amadou Bâ, Université des Antilles, Guadeloupe

                Reviewed by: Laila Pamela Partida-Martinez, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico; Marc Ducousso, Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, France

                *Correspondence: Fisseha Asmelash, fisseha33@ 123456gmail.com

                These authors have contributed equally to this work.

                This article was submitted to Plant Biotic Interactions, a section of the journal Frontiers in Microbiology

                Article
                10.3389/fmicb.2016.01095
                4960231
                27507960
                27d578d1-439e-4208-b4db-6bd2fe347d59
                Copyright © 2016 Asmelash, Bekele and Birhane.

                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.

                History
                : 21 January 2016
                : 30 June 2016
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 1, Equations: 0, References: 150, Pages: 15, Words: 0
                Categories
                Microbiology
                Review

                Microbiology & Virology
                amf,ecological restoration,facilitation,inoculation,land degradation,mycorrhiza,monoxenic culture,succession

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