In vitro culture of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: advances and future prospects

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are ecologically important for most vascular plants for their growth and survival. AM fungi are obligate symbionts. In recent years, there have been many attempts to cultivate in vitro. Some relevant results indicate efforts are not far from successful growth of AM fungi independent of a plant host. This paper describes the methods to cultivate root organs, and to select and purify AM fungal inocula (intraradical and extraradical forms). Axenic and monoxenic cultures of AM fungi are summarized and we propose a methodology to recover and achieve continuous culture of AM fungi without lost of infectivity. The in vitro systems have proved to be a valuable tool to study fundamental and practical aspects of AM symbiosis, complementing the in vivo experimental approaches. Finally, we give some proposals of in vitro AM researches to exploit more the potentialities of AM symbiosis.