Mycorrhizal fungi enhance nutrient uptake but disarm defences in plant roots, promoting plant-parasitic nematode populations

Our results demonstrate AM fungi can reduce plant biomass and supress root defence compounds associated with plant resistance to invertebrate pests, while still providing nutritional benefit to the host plant. This highlights that mycorrhizal colonisation of wheat varieties can have simultaneous positive and negative effects on different plant traits which drive plant-herbivore interactions. In working towards effective exploitation of the AM symbiosis in sustainable plant production, the context dependent outcomes of mycorrhizal-plant-nematode interactions is a key challenge. Untargeted metabolomic profiling offers the ability to reveal some of the driving mechanisms underpinning such complex tripartite interactions in the soil.