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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbe and Virus Interactions with Plants
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1488639
This article is part of the Research Topic Cereal Crop Chronicles: Recent Advances in Beneficial and Pathogenic Plant-Microbe Interactions View all 6 articles

Drought Tolerant Fungal Microbes Aspergillus oryzae, and Aspergillus fumigatus Elevate Physio-hormonal and Antioxidant Responses of Maize under Drought Stress

Provisionally accepted
Kiran Niaz Kiran Niaz 1Mamoona Rauf Mamoona Rauf 1*Muhammad Arif Muhammad Arif 1*Prof. Dr. Dr. Muhammad Hamayun Prof. Dr. Dr. Muhammad Hamayun 1Humaira Gul Humaira Gul 1Abeer Hashem Abeer Hashem 2Elsayed Fathi Abd_Allah Elsayed Fathi Abd_Allah 3Qiang-Sheng Wu Qiang-Sheng Wu 4
  • 1 Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Mardan, Pakistan
  • 2 Department of Botany and Microbiology, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 3 Department of Plant Production, College of Food and Agriculture Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 4 College of Horticulture and Gardening, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Temporary and extended drought stress accelerates phytohormones and reactive oxygen species (ROS) in plants, however, the fate of the plants under stress is mostly determined by the metabolic and molecular reprogramming, which can be modulated by the application of habitatadapted fungi that triggers resistance to stress upon symbiotic association. The present research exhibited novel findings about the growth-promoting role of the newly isolated, drought habitatadapted fungal endophytic consortium of SAB (Aspergillus oryzae), and CBW (Aspergillus fumigatus) on maize under drought stress. SAB and CBW primarily hosted the root tissues of Conyza boneriensis L., which have not been reported earlier, and sufficiently produced growthpromoting metabolites and antioxidants. SAB and CBW adeptly inhabited the maize roots. They promoted biomass, primary metabolites, osmolytes (protein, sugar, lipids, proline, phenolics, flavonoids), and IAA production while reducing tannins, ABA, and H2O2 contents and increasing antioxidant enzyme activities. In addition, the enhanced adventitious root development at the root/stem interface, and elongated main root development optimum stomatal activity of SAB and CBW-inoculated maize plants were observed under drought stress. SAB and CBW modulated the expression of the ZmBSK1, ZmAPX, and ZmCAT1 genes in the maize shoot and root tissues under drought stress vs. control, signifying an essential regulatory function for SAB/CBW-induced drought stress tolerance via phytohormonal signalling pathway leading to the antioxidant upregulation. These results imply that the exogenous administration of the SAB/CBW consortium might be a rather efficient strategy that contributes to optimizing the physio-hormonal attributes and antioxidant potential to alleviate the drought stress in maize.

    Keywords: beneficial fungal microbes, Plant-microbe interaction, Drought stress, phytohormones, Metabolites, Maize

    Received: 30 Aug 2024; Accepted: 25 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Niaz, Rauf, Arif, Hamayun, Gul, Hashem, Abd_Allah and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Mamoona Rauf, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Mardan, Pakistan
    Muhammad Arif, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Mardan, Pakistan

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