ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbe and Virus Interactions with Plants
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1576236
Effect of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on flavonoids in Astragali Radix grown in cadmium-contaminated soils
Provisionally accepted
- Chang’an University, Xi'an, China
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Astragali Radix (AR), flavonoids can promote hematopoiesis and hypolipidemic, etc., which are easily affected by environmental factors. Due to establish a reciprocal symbiotic relationship with most plants, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can influence flavonoid synthesis in plants under heavy metals by expanding the absorption area of roots. Here, we investigated the effect of Funneliformis mosseae and time on the total flavonoids and key monomers (calycosin, calycosin-7-glucoside, formononetin, and ononin) in AR exposed to cadmium (Cd) using a pot experiment. The treatments consisted of the noninoculations and F. mosseae inoculation. Two-way analysis of variance and the Duncan's test were proceeded. Shoot total flavonoids decreased (p < 0.05) at 60 (20.5%) and 90 d (18.3%) and formononetin (83.4%) at 120 d and calycosin-7glucoside increased (p < 0.05) under the inoculation, and calycosin-7-glucoside decreased (p < 0.05) with time from 60 d to 120 d irrespective of inoculation. Shoot calycosin increased (p < 0.05) with time irrespective of inoculation. Root total flavonoids decreased (p < 0.05) by 15.2% at 60 d and increased (p < 0.05) by 23.5% at 90 d, and formononetin (117.1%) and ononin (59.6%) at 60 d and calycosin-7glucoside (21.2%) at 120 d increased (p < 0.05) under the inoculation. The colonization rate and shoot Cd, C, P, H and C/N ratio significantly affected shoot flavonoids, and Cd explained 90.0% of flavonoid variation, which might associated with the effect of Cd on flavonoid synthase. The variation of root flavonoids was significantly affected by root S, biomass and N, suggesting that AMF regulation might different between ARorgans. Calycosin-7-glucoside was significantly affected by phenylalanine ammonialyase (key gene in flavonoid synthesis). Overall, F. mosseae caused significant increases in shoot total flavonoids and calycosin-7-glucosid, calycosin-7-glucoside and the total flavonoids were higher in shoots than in roots, suggesting that annual AR shoots exposed to Cd might be used for medicine under F. mosseae. The results will provide insights into improvement of AMF on the quality of medicinal plants grown in Cd-contaminated soils, and the long-term effect of AMF on flavonoids at varying Cd levels should be further investigated.
Keywords: Funneliformis mosseae, flavonoid monomers, Cadmium, Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase gene, Chalcone synthase gene
Received: 14 Feb 2025; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Meng, Jia and Zhao. 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: Xia Jia, Chang’an University, Xi'an, China
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