Abstract
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are vital component of natural ecosystem, being gifted to form symbiont with plant roots. AM fungi have mutualistic relationships with more than 80% of terrestrial plant species. Because of wide range of relationships with host plants, it becomes difficult to identify the species on the morphological bases as the spores are to be extracted from the soil. In spite of their abundance and wide range of relationship with plant species, AMF have shown low species diversity. AMF have high functional diversity because different combinations of host plants and AMF have different effects on the numerous aspects of symbiosis. Recent fossil evidence has dated the appearance of arbuscular mycorrhizae back to 460 million years, preexisting vascular plants. These studies benefit the paleoecological importance of mycorrhizae and enhancement to our understanding of the evolution of mutualisms.
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Acknowledgment
Ajit Varma is thankful to Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology for partial financial funding and to DST-FIST for providing confocal microscope facility.
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Prasad, R. et al. (2017). Introduction to Mycorrhiza: Historical Development. In: Varma, A., Prasad, R., Tuteja, N. (eds) Mycorrhiza - Function, Diversity, State of the Art. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53064-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53064-2_1
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