Vesicular-Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Associations in Three Forest Types in the Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve, Subtropical China

Vesicular-arbuscular myoorrhizal (V AM) associations of 107 plant species in 3 major forest types of the Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve in subtropical China were investigated. The primary result showed that 44 plant species had V AM associations, aeeounting for 41 % of the plants surveyed. This includes 26 genera of plants whose myoorrhizal associations had not previously been reported. Spores of V AM fungi occur-ring in soils the Dinghushan area, included Gigaspora and Glomus species. These results are significant for the conservation, administration and utilisation of V AM fungus resources, and also for the study on forest ecosystems. Key words: vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza, forest communities, natural ecosystem, mycor-rhizal roots, ecology VESICULAR-arbuscular mycorrhizal (V AM) associa-tions are caused by fungi in the Zygomycete order Glomales which colonise the roots of many plants species and have an important role in plant mineral nutrition. Studies of V AM associations in natural ecosystems in China began in the 1980s. Chen et al. (1981) reported that 96 species of plants had V AM in central subtropical China; Cao et al. (1985) demon-strated that 17 species of plants had V AM in a deser