The role of endophytic fungi in combating abiotic stress on tomato

Abstract

Environmental stress to plants is more detrimental than biotic stress. Abiotic stresses, such as drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, heavy metal toxicity, and oxidative stress, are serious threats to agriculture and lead to deterioration of the environment. Abiotic stress leads to a series of morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular changes that have a harmful effect on plant growth and productivity. Recently endophytic fungi (EF) are gaining attention due to the numerous benefits gained by the host plant and reducing the application of chemicals in agriculture, thus providing advantages to human health and the environment. Indeed, microbe’s ability to confer plant stress resistance may open a new avenue for alleviating the adverse effect of global climate change on agricultural production. The ability of endophytes recovered from grasses were applied to confer drought, high temperature and high salinity to genetically distant plants such as tomato. The concept that fungal endophytes adapt to stress in a habitat-specific manner has been confirmed with different fungal and plant species and environmental stresses. In this review, we have tried to comprehend different roles of endophytes in combating abiotic stress on tomato.