Arbuscular mycorrhizas and their significance in promoting soil-plant systems sustainability against environmental stresses

The stability and productivity of agro-ecosystems is largely dependent on maintaining the quality of soil resources through a sustainable soil management, which aims to conserve its productive capacity, minimizing energy and resource use by optimizing the rate of turnover and recycling of nutrients (Altieri 2004). These are fundamental issues not only for a sustainable production of healthy crops, or to ensure ecosystem selfsustainability, but also to prevent erosion and to minimize negative environmental impacts (Buscot 2005).We thank support from the Spanish National Research Program (R & D+i)-European Union (FEDER) through different grants which financed research on the different topics covered in this chapter: CGL2009-08825/ BOS, AGL2009-07691, AGL2011-25403, AGL2009-12530-C02-02, AGL2009-08868; and from the Andalucian (Spain) Government, PAIDI (R & D+i) Program: P07-CVI-02952, P11-CVI-07107, CVI-7640.Peer reviewe