Native arbuscular mycorrhiza colonization in seedling root of dogfruit (Archidendron pauciflorum) planted as seed-ball in field

Abstract

Arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) is a mutualistic symbiosis between soil fungi and plants, including dogfruit (Archidendron pauciflorum). Archidendron pauciflorum is a local plant from Southeast Asia, including Indonesia that is used for food and animal forest feed. Planting A. pauciflorum seedlings on revegetation land with a sharp slope is difficult and dangerous to workers. Therefore, seed-ball planting technique is required for revegetation of post-mining sharp slope areas. This research aimed to study the ability of the native AM fungi to colonize A. pauciflorum seedlings grown as a seed-ball in the field for revegetation purposes. The seed-ball was made using three types of fungal inoculum sources, namely control without AM fungi, natural forest, and stockpile inoculum. All colonization structures, such as entry points, coils, arbuscules, and vesicles, were observed. All seedlings were colonized by AM fungi, with root colonization ranging from 2% to 16%. Stockpile inoculum had a higher AM colonization than the natural forest inoculum. Both sources of native AM fungi tended to improve the growth of the seedling. There were two types of AM spores found in all treatments, Glomus sp. 1 and Glomus sp. 2. Glomus sp. 2 is the dominant species of AM fungi in all treatments.