Abstract

Sarojini Nanak, Anil O. Virat and Viswanathan Ambani

The Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungus (AMF) plays a symbiotic vital role in most of the plant species by maintaining health, nutrient availability, against water stress, heavy metal resistance, against dreadful diseases with higher yields. To reach the requirement of AMF, large scale production practices can be required to produce specific strain aseptic inoculum. Carrot roots were selected for mass production of mycorrhizal spores among tomato, potato, sweet potato, soybean, amaranths and carrots through root organ culturing method. Aggregated roots were cultured and developed as root clumps for continuous sub-culturing. With slight modification of root organ culture method and split plate method, in containers shown significant increase in the extra radical spore count. Maximum Rhizophagus irregularis spore count was achieved with molecular weight (MW) medium among three different media MW medium, M medium and MSR medium. Almost 99204±1438.10 R. irregularis propagules were achieved with sugar free MW medium per container in 90 days of incubation in dark. M medium fortified with 1% sugars yields 16236±1186.70 intraradical and 39458±1098.00 extra radical spores were observed. To achieve continuous production of Mycorrhizal inoculum, transformed callus root clumps were infected with R. irregularis. This AMF inoculum developed in the sugar free medium is less contagious and highly productive during the process of harvesting, packing, transportation and preserved for longer duration without much contaminants.