Endophytic Fungi of Tomato and Their Potential Applications for Crop Improvement

Martina Sinno, Marta Ranesi, Laura Gioia, Giada d’Errico and Sheridan Lois Woo
Additional contact information
Martina Sinno: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80055 Portici (NA), Italy
Marta Ranesi: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80055 Portici (NA), Italy
Laura Gioia: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80055 Portici (NA), Italy
Giada d’Errico: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80055 Portici (NA), Italy
Sheridan Lois Woo: Department of Pharmacy, University of Naples Federico II, 80131 Napoli, Italy

Agriculture, 2020, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-20

Abstract: Endophytic fungi (EF) are increasingly gaining attention due to the numerous benefits many species can offer to the plant host, while reducing the application of chemicals in agriculture, thus providing advantages to human health and the environment. The growing demand for safer agrifood products and the challenge of increasing food production with a lower use of pesticides and fertilizers stimulates investigations on the use and understanding of EF. Other than direct consequences on the plant damaging agents, these microorganisms can also deliver bioactive metabolites with antimicrobial, insecticidal, or plant biostimulant activities. In tomato, EF are artificially introduced as biological control agents or naturally acquired from the surrounding environment. To date, the applications of EF to tomato has been generally limited to a restricted group of beneficial fungi. In this work, considerations are made to the effects and methods of introduction and detection of EF on tomato plants, consolidating in a review the main findings that regard pest and pathogen control, and improvement of plant performance. Moreover, a survey was undertaken of the naturally occurring constitutive endophytes present in this horticultural crop, with the aim to evaluate the potential role in the selection of new beneficial EF useful for tomato crop improvement.

Keywords: endophytes; biocontrol; biostimulants; induced systemic resistance; ISR; plant pathogens; fungal entomopathogens (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/12/587/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/12/587/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:10:y:2020:i:12:p:587-:d:452270

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().