Aspergillus niger boosted heat stress tolerance in sunflower and soybean via regulating their metabolic and antioxidant system

Abstract

Plants can be severely affected by heat stress due to rapid environmental changes. Use of endophytic fungi is a new tool to protect crops from the environmental stresses. Here we claim a potent endophyte isolated from Sonchus asper L. The aim was to explore the stress adaptive mechanism of sunflower and soybean mediated by Aspergillus niger (SonchL-7) under high temperature. Inoculation with A. niger boosted plant height, biomass and chlorophyl contents, while significantly curtailed the concentration of lipid peroxidation and reactive oxygen species (ROS) under thermal stress at 40°C. Moreover, the ROS-scavenging activities, like ascorbic acid oxidase (AAO), catalase (CAT), glutathione reductase (GR), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase (POD) were augmented. Also, proline and phenolics were enhanced in the tested crops, while ABA concentration was significantly reduced. These positive results suggested that A. niger can be used as a heat-stress ameliorative tool for crops in the future.

Benefits to Plant Health and Productivity From Enhancing Plant Microbial Symbionts

“…A. niger enhanced heat tolerance of soybean and sunflower by control of ROS and peroxidative damage. This organism also increased plant growth and enhanced chlorophyll levels (Ismail et al, 2020).…”

“…Numerous fungi and bacteria may provide beneficial effects including endophytic fungi (T. afroharzianum, viride, atroviride, virens, reesei and others;Woo et al, 2014;Ikram et al, 2019), in addition to other endophytic fungi such as strains of Aspergillus niger (Ismail et al, 2020), Penicillium roqueforti (Ikram et al, 2018), Aspergillus terreus (Khushdil et al, 2019) Yarriwia lipolytica (Farzana et al, 2019), as well as Piriformaspora indica (Gill et al, 2016) Penicillium citrinum and Aspergillus terreus (Waqas et al, 2015), and bacteria such as Pseudomonas (Pieterse et al, 2014), Bacillus (Kloepper et al, 2004) and Rhizobiacae (Chi et al, 2005). It is important to note that, while many fungi and bacteria are endophytic and provide benefits to plants, microbial effects on plants are highly specific to individual strains.…”

Biological Seed Treatments

“…Many other fungi and bacteria are endophytic and can potentially be used for seed treatment. These include fungi in the genera Trichoderma (Harman 2011;Woo et al 2014;Doni et al 2017), Aspergillus (Ismail et al 2020), Penicillium (Ikram et al 2018a), Clonostachys (Shafia et al 2001), Piriformaspora (Sherameti et al 2005), and Yarrowia lipolutoca (Franza et al 2019), as well as bacteria in the genera Pseudomonas (Konappa et al 2020) and Bacillus (Konappa et al 2020;Brannen 1997), and in the family Rhizobiacae (Chi et al 2015).…”

“…Trichoderma strains increase the tolerance of tomato to cold stress first through mitigation of ROS damage and increased proline content and also by changes in the regulation of gene expression of transcription factors NAC1 and dehydrin TAS14 (Ghorbanpour et al 2018). A. niger has been shown to be effective in alleviating heat stress by controlling ROS damage and increasing chlorophyll contents (Ishmail et al 2010).…”

Aspergillus Flavus reprogrammed morphological and chemical attributes of Solanum lycopersicum through SlGSH1 and SlPCS1 genes modulation under heavy metal stress

“…In addition to the plant growth-promoting potential, the endophytes are capable of heavy metal chelation and/or sequestration in contaminated soils (Zahoor et al 2017;Qadir et al 2020). Amongst the endophytes, various Aspergillus species (Aspergillus japonicas, Aspergillus violaceofuscus, Aspergillus niger, and Aspergillus flavus) have attracted plant biologists to explore their strong mutualistic associations with the host plants (Ismail et al 2018;Ismail et al 2019;Ismail et al 2020b;Ismail et al 2020c). Various species of Aspergillus have also shown their ability to secret sufficient amounts of secondary metabolites, including butenolides, alkaloids, terpenoids, cytochalasins, phenalenones, ρ-terphenyls, xanthones, sterols, diphenyl ether, and anthraquinone derivatives with diverse biological (El-hawary et al 2020).…”