Niches for bacterial endophytes in crop plants: a plant biologist's view

By M. Mccully. 2001

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Currently proposed means of entry of bacterial endophytes into roots of field-grown crop plants, as well as niches available for their successful colonization of living tissues, are evaluated from a plant biology perspective and the following conclusions drawn. (1) Opportunities for passive crack entry' into healthy, undisturbed roots in the field may not be as available as studies with laboratory-grown plants have suggested. Consistent entry of endophytes into living root tissues in the field probably requires bacterial capability to hydrolyse the hydrophobic incrustations of the walls of epidermal, hypodermal, endodermal and other cortical cells. (2) Xylem lumen apoplast is an unsuitable niche for endophytes, especially in the grasses, because of the reduced fitness such colonization imposes on plants subjected to field stresses. (3) The intercellular space apoplast is the most suitable niche for endophytes. More data about the environment of this apoplast are urgently needed so that plant varieties can be tailored to provide an optimal environment in these spaces for particular endophytes. It is suggested that many bacterial endophytes' may not have colonized living tissues, but are living in protective niches in dead surface tissues or closely adhering soil of rhizosheaths. Selection of strains of beneficial bacteria adapted for colonizing these external niches may be desirable.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f7083118c18f0cb119bdc036b6145ceff75423cd

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Citations in the corpus

Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR): emergence in agriculture (2011, background): “In rhizospheric relationship, the PGPRs can colonize the rhizosphere, the surface of the root or even the superficial intercellular spaces of plant roots (McCully 2001).”
Morphological approaches in studying fungi: collection, examination, isolation, sporulation and preservation (2020, methodology): “The method has been used frequently and is especially successful for root tissues (McCully 2001, Tolulope et al. 2015, Gouda 2016, Hamayun et al. 2018, Shah et al. 2018, Wang et al. 2019).”
Rhizosphere biology and crop productivity—a review (2006, background): “McCully (2001) proposed that endophytic inoculants are likely to be living in decaying cortices of roots.”
Plant growth-promoting bacteria in the rhizo- and endosphere of plants: Their role, colonization, mechanisms involved and prospects for utilization (2010, background): “Although at the beginning of the 1990's it was strongly argued, that lumen xylem colonization is a property of phytopathogens (McCully, 2001), it is nowadays known that non-phytopathogenic endophytes can spread inside plants in the samemanner (Fig.”
FUSARIUM VERTICILLIOIDES: MANAGING THE ENDOPHYTIC ASSOCIATION WITH MAIZE FOR REDUCED FUMONISINS ACCUMULATION (2008, background): “It is well known that several species of bacteria are endophytic in plants, and most of these are being developed as biocontrol agents (for review see Chanway, 1996; Hallmann et al., 1997; Chanway, 1998; Kobayashi et al., 2000; Sturz et al., 2000; McCully, 2005; Bacon and Hinton, 2006).”
The Hidden World within Plants: Ecological and Evolutionary Considerations for Defining Functioning of Microbial Endophytes (2015, background): “In addition, the locations of endophytes in different plant compartments are disputable (16), but powerful image analyses can provide information about the exact colocalization within plant tissues and about physical contacts between different microbial groups (17–19).”