Symbiotic Fungi for Eco-friendly Environment: <i>A Perspective</i>

396-400Increasing interest in commercial cultivation of medicinal and economically important plants on large scale has necessitated development of various tissue culture techniques for their early growth and improvement in yield. But sometimes micropropagated plants do not acclimatize due to lack of eco-friendly microorganisms in the rhizosphere zones. The relevance of mycorrhiza for the acclimatization, success of micropropagated plantlets has gained importance in the recent past, because most of the forest trees are obligatory dependent upon the mycorrhizal symbiosis. The influence of early mycorrhizal symbiosis under controlled conditions and their resistance to environmental stresses had been reported earlier. Since Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi do not grow like any other fungi apart from their living hosts, an axenically cultivable mycorrhiza-like-fungus named, Piriformospora indica was discovered. The utilization of this fungus in acclimatization of selected economically and medicinally important plants has been discussed in this paper for further exploration