Effects of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Inoculations and Cotyledon Removal on Early Seedling Growth of Jatropha Curcas L.

• DOI: 10.1007/s40011-015-0617-7
• Publication Date: 2015-07-27T14:27:14Z
• Authors: Anuradha Jha; Anil Kumar; Ashok Shukla; Madhvi Kamalvanshi; Neha Chakravarty; Shiv Kumar Dhyani
• Keywords: 2. Zero hunger; 0401 agriculture, forestry, and fisheries; 04 agricultural and veterinary sciences

A study was conducted to investigate the response of Jatropha curcas L., an important bio-diesel plant species, to arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) inoculations. AM species, isolated from its rhizosphere could colonize its roots/rhizospheres, indicating that J. curcas does not retard the activities of AM fungi. However, the seedlings did not respond positively to the inoculations and mycorrhizal dependency (MD) for some inoculants was in the negative range. This could be due to the large amount of nutrients stored in cotyledons of big sized J. curcas seeds. Further results showed that the removal of cotyledons (metabolic reserves) immediately after seed germination did not increase MD of J. curcas. Workers from different countries have reported variable results on this aspect and it is generally admitted that different populations, varieties, cultivars or strains of any specific cultivated crop may react differently to different situations such as inoculation with AM fungi. Therefore, it will be worthwhile to test the different populations of J. curcas from various locations under a given set of conditions.