Symbiotic Fungi: Principles and Practice (Soil Biology)

Chapter 10
Assessing the Mycorrhizal Diversity of Soils
and Identification of Fungus Fruiting Bodies
and Axenic Cultures
Dirk Krüger, Manisha Sharma, and Ajit Varma
10.1 Introduction
Symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi play a pivotal role in biological interactions and
biogeochemical cycles because the carbon they obtain from their photosynthetic
plant hosts is allocated through the mycorrhizal mycelium to the soil ecosystem. In
addition to these interactions with their host plant’s roots, the mycelia also interact
with a range of organic and inorganic substrates, as well as with different organisms
such as bacteria, other fungi, soil micro- and mesofauna and the roots of secondary
host plants (Finlay 2005).
Progress has been made in recent decades in the knowledge of root and mycorrhizae
formation and turnover and its impacts on soil ecosystems; soil biota,
exudations, secretions and soil aggregation phenomena; the biology of invasive
species in soils; soil biodiversity, legacies and linkages to soil processes; and
ecosystem functional responses (Coleman 2008).
The advances and cost reduction in DNA-based identification of biological
material has been greatly improving the catalog of methods available to soil
ecologists (Anderson and Cairney 2004). While we here describe the work with
specimens and cultures, it is noteworthy that direct application of molecular
methods to environmental material can detect many more, yet often different, sets
of fungal taxa, as for example shown for the large basidiomycete diversity in
agricultural soil (Lynch and Thorn 2006).
D. Krüger (*)
UFZ - Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Ltd., Department of Soil Ecology, Theodor-
Lieser-Straße 4, D-06120 Halle/Saale (Germany)
e-mail: dirk.krueger@ufz.de
M. Sharma and A. Varma
Amity Institute of Microbial Technology (AIMT), Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Sector 125,
Noida, UP 201303 (India)
A. Varma and A.C. Kharkwal (eds.), Symbiotic Fungi, Soil Biology 18, 159
DOI: 10.1007/978‐3‐540‐95894‐9_10, # Springer‐Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009