Research Article Root-endophytes improve the ecophysiological performance and production of an agricultural species under drought condition Marco A. Molina-Montenegro* 1,2,3,4 ,R  omulo Oses 3 , Cristian Torres-D  ıaz 5 , Cristian Atala 6 , Andre ´ s Zurita-Silva 7 and Sim  on Ruiz-Lara 1 1 Instituto de Ciencias Biol  ogicas, Universidad de Talca, Avenida Lircay s/n, Talca, Chile 2 N ucleo Milenio “Centro en Ecolog  ıa Molecular y Aplicaciones Evolutivas en Agroecosistemas (CEM)”, Avda. Lircay s/n, Talca, Chile 3 Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas  Aridas (CEAZA), Facultad de Ciencias del Mar, Universidad Cat olica del Norte, Larrondo #1281, Coquimbo, Chile 4 Research Program “Adaptation of the Agriculture to Climate Change” PIEI A2C2, Universidad de Talca, Talca, Chile 5 Laboratorio de Gen omica & Biodiversidad (LGB), Departamento de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad del B  ıo-B  ıo, Chillan, Chile 6 Laboratorio de Anatom  ıa y Ecolog  ıa Funcional de Plantas, Instituto de Biolog  ıa, Facultad de ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Cat olica de Valpara  ıso, Campus Curauma, Valpara  ıso, Chile 7 Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA), Centro de Investigaci  on Intihuasi, Colina San Joaqu  ın s/n, La Serena, Chile Received: 25 November 2015; Accepted: 29 July 2016; Published: 9 September 2016 Associate Editor: Astrid Volder Citation: Molina-Montenegro MA, Oses R, Torres-D  ıaz C, Atala C, Zurita-Silva A, Ruiz-Lara S. 2016. Root-endophytes improve the ecophysiological performance and production of an agricultural species under drought condition. AoB PLANTS 8: plw062; doi:10.1093/aobpla/plw062 Abstract. Throughout many regions of the world, climate change has limited the availability of water for irrigating crops. Indeed, current models of climate change predict that arid and semi-arid zones will be places where precipita- tion will drastically decrease. In this context, plant root-associated fungi appear as a new strategy to improve ecophy- siological performance and yield of crops under abiotic stress. Thus, use of fungal endophytes from ecosystems currently subjected to severe drought conditions could improve the ecophysiological performance and quantum yield of crops exposed to drought. In this study, we evaluated how the inoculation of fungal endophytes isolated from Antarctic plants can improve the net photosynthesis, water use efficiency and production of fresh biomass in a lettuce cultivar, grown under different water availability regimes. In addition, we assessed if the presence of biochemical mechanisms and gene expression related with environmental tolerance are improved in presence of fungal endo- phytes. Overall, those individuals with presence of endophytes showed higher net photosynthesis and maintained higher water use efficiency in drought conditions, which was correlated with greater fresh and dry biomass production as well as greater root system development. In addition, presence of fungal endophytes was correlated with a higher proline concentration, lower peroxidation of lipids and up-/down-regulation of ion homeostasis. Our results suggest that presence of fungal endophytes could minimize the negative effect of drought by improving drought tolerance through biochemical mechanisms and improving nutritional status. Thus, root-endophytes might be a successful bio- technological tool to maintain high levels of ecophysiological performance and productivity in zones under drought. * Corresponding author’s e-mail address: marco.molina@utalca.cl V C The Authors 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is prop- erly cited. AoB PLANTS www.aobplants.oxfordjournals.org V C The Authors 2016 100 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/aobpla/article/doi/10.1093/aobpla/plw062/2609621 by guest on 15 November 2023