Two international trainings on the in vitro culture of AM fungi are offered by the CESAMM/GINCO teams.

For more information, visit: International trainings website

News

International traning on in vitro culture of AM fungi (2006-12-22)

The technique of in vitro cultivation of root organs has been developed over the last decades and opens new ways for studying plant-fungi associations. It is a especially useful for the investigation of the ubiquitous arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, as these obligate symbionts rely on plant tissue.

In vitro cultivation, due to the production of high quality fungal material devoid of undesirable contaminants, offers unique advantages in genetic, cell biology, biodiversity and physiological investigation of AM fungi. Non-destructive microscopic observations, reliable cell physiology studies, clean biochemical and molecular analyses, highly controlled interaction studies with other microorganisms and mass production at an industrial scale, are amongst other applications permitted by this technique.

The recently published book "In Vitro Culture of Mycorrhizas" (Declerck, Fortin and Strullu, 2005) proposes an interesting compilation of these areas and a complete description of the routine methodologies for the in vitro cultivation of AM fungi used in the "Glomeromycota IN vitro COllection" (GINCO).

To complete the promotion of this technique, we propose a specific training devoted to the process of AM fungi in vitro culture from the establishment to the maintenance following the methodologies routinely used in GINCO.

This training is directed to PhD students, researchers and technicians interested in developing this technique for research activities and for aforementioned purpose.

In the forthcoming weeks, another training will be proposed in late June 2007. This training will be devoted to the systems of in vitro cultivation of AMF on autotrophic plants developed by the CESAMM team (Voets et al., 2005; Dupré de Boulois et al., 2006).

S. Declerck - S. Cranenbrouck