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Asexual Epichloë fungi: Obligate mutualists

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posted on 2023-05-10, 07:37 authored by John CaradusJohn Caradus, Stuart CardStuart Card, Katrin Hewitt, David HumeDavid Hume, Linda JohnsonLinda Johnson
Asexual Epichloë are obligate fungal mutualists that form symbiosis with many temperate grass species, providing several advantages to the host. These advantages include protection against vertebrate and invertebrate herbivores (i.e., grazing livestock and invertebrate pests, respectively), improved resistance to phytopathogens, increased adaptation to drought stress, nutrient deficiency, and heavy metal-containing soils. Selected Epichloë strains are utilised in agriculture mainly for their pest resistance traits, which are moderated via the production of Epichloë-derived secondary metabolites. For pastoral agriculture, the use of these endophyte infected grasses requires the balancing of protection against insect pests with reduced impacts on animal health and welfare

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© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Language

  • English

Does this contain Māori information or data?

  • No

Publisher

MDPI

Journal title

Encyclopedia

ISSN

2673-8392

Citation

Caradus, J. R., Card, S. D., Hewitt, K. G., Hume, D. E., & Johnson, L. J. (2021). Asexual Epichloë fungi: Obligate mutualists. Encyclopedia, 1(4), 1084–1100. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia1040083

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