Production of Seedlings Inoculated with Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Their Performance After Outplanting

Presently, one agricultural area of great commercial interest involves the production of quality seedlings. These seedlings must have a guarantee that they do not carry pathogens. Therefore, many seedling producers disinfect the subsoil in order to diminish the risk of spreading diseases. Producers now utilize the production of in vitro vegetatively cloned seedlings under axenic conditions, maintaining the characteristics obtained through genetic improvement and eliminating diseases. These practices improve the commercial quality of the seedling but usually eliminate or reduce drastically the population of the majority of organisms present in the soil, including such beneficial ones as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF).