Multidisciplinary Agroindustry Research Laboratory, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Talca, Chile.
Instituto de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad de Talca, Talca, Chile.
Food Res Int. 2022 Nov;161:111850. doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2022.111850. Epub 2022 Aug 27.
Climate change is threatening human activities, but the combination of water scarcity and heat waves are particularly challenging agriculture. Accumulating literature shows that beneficial fungal endophytes improve plant performance, a condition that seems to be magnified in presence of stress. Because evidence points out to an endophytic mediation of antioxidant activity in plants, we here focused on flavonoids for two main reasons: (i) they are involved in plant tolerance to abiotic stress, and (ii) they are known to be healthy for human consumption. With these two premises as guidance, we explored the literature trying to link mechanistically the relationship between endophytes and plant responses to stress as well as identifying patterns and knowledge gaps. Overall, fungal endophytes improve plant growth and tolerance to environmental stresses. However, evidence for endophytes boosting flavonoid mediated responses in plants is relatively scarce. Reports showing endophytes promoting flavonoid contents in grains and fresh fruits are rather limited which may be related to (long) length of the required experiments for testing it. The use of endophytes isolated from extreme environments (e.g., dry and cold deserts, acid lakes, etc.) is proposed to be better in conferring tolerance to plants under very stressful conditions. However, the real challenge is to test the capacity of these endophytes to established and maintain persistent and functional symbiosis under productive conditions. In summary, there is a clear potential for symbiotically modifying crop plants as a strategy to develop more tolerant varieties to face the stress and eventually increase the quality of the agricultural products.
气候变化正在威胁人类活动，但水资源短缺和热浪的结合对农业尤其具有挑战性。越来越多的文献表明，有益的真菌内生菌可以提高植物的性能，这种情况在存在压力时似乎会放大。由于有证据表明内生菌可以介导植物的抗氧化活性，我们主要出于以下两个原因关注黄酮类化合物：(i) 它们参与植物对非生物胁迫的耐受，(ii) 已知它们对人类食用有益。基于这两个前提，我们探索了文献，试图从机制上联系内生菌与植物对胁迫的反应之间的关系，并确定模式和知识差距。总的来说，真菌内生菌可以提高植物的生长和对环境胁迫的耐受能力。然而，内生菌促进植物中黄酮类物质介导的反应的证据相对较少。关于内生菌促进谷物和新鲜水果中黄酮类物质含量的报道相当有限，这可能与测试这一现象所需的实验时间较长有关。从极端环境（如干旱和寒冷的沙漠、酸性湖泊等）中分离出的内生菌被提议用于更好地赋予植物在非常恶劣条件下的耐受能力。然而，真正的挑战是测试这些内生菌在生产条件下建立和维持持久和功能性共生的能力。总的来说，通过共生来修饰作物植物具有明显的潜力，可以作为开发更具耐受性品种的策略，以应对压力，并最终提高农产品的质量。
