High temperature is one of the leading threats to the plants that severely affects crop quality as well as quantity. Endophytic fungi might be a new tool to safeguard crops against the perilous effects of global warming. In this context, we isolated a thermal stress mitigating endophytic fungus from the fern Dryopteris filix L. The phylogenetic study and 18S rRNA sequence similarity confirmed the potential strain as Aspergillus violaceofuscus. The culture filtrate of A. violaceofuscus exhibited higher concentration of secondary metabolites that enhanced the total chlorophyll content, plant height and biomass of sunflower and soybean seedlings under heat stress. Conversely, the A. violaceofuscus associated plants achieved low levels of reactive oxygen species, abscisic acid, catalase, ascorbic acid oxidase, proline and an overall improved the nutritional value. The current study suggests that A. violaceofuscus can be used as heat stress adaptive tool in crops to achieve sustainable agriculture.
Ismail et al. (Wed,) studied this question.