Mycorrhizal responsiveness trends in annual crop plants and their wild relatives—a meta-analysis on studies from 1981 to 2010

Year of release of a cultivar reflects the agricultural and breeding practices of its time; we hypothesize that there are differences in mycorrhizal responsiveness of new high yielding and old crop plants and landraces. We evaluated the importance of the year of release on mycorrhizal responsiveness, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal root colonization and P efficiency. We also analyzed the effect of experimental treatments, P efficiency (P acquisition and P utilization efficiency) and AM fungal root colonization on a potential mycorrhizal responsiveness trend for year of release. We conducted a meta-analysis on 39 publications working on 320 different crop plant genotypes. New cultivars were less intensely colonized but were more mycorrhiza-responsive (and possibly dependent) compared to ancestral genotypes. This trend was potentially influenced by the moderator variables density, pre-germination, plant, plant type and AMF species. AM root colonization was also important for the mycorrhizal responsiveness trend for year of release, but P efficiency was not. With the data available we could find no evidence that new crop plant genotypes lost their ability to respond to mycorrhiza due to agricultural and breeding practices.