What Is the Role of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi in Mitigating the Effects of Microplastics?

Microplastics (MPs) represent a growing threat to terrestrial ecosystems, affecting soil physicochemical properties, nutrient availability, and plant physiology. These contaminants promote the formation of the plastisphere, a soil–plastic interface that alters microbial dynamics. In this context, symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) emerges as an agrobiotechnology strategy to mitigate such effects by promoting plant growth, increasing photosynthetic rate, regulating hormonal balance, and enhancing antioxidant activity. Despite existing studies on this topic, approaches gathering studies that evaluated the effects of mycorrhization for plant hosts’ antioxidant specialized metabolism and physiology under MP stress conditions have not been utilized. Therefore, this narrative review aimed to assess the role of AMF-induced changes for mitigating microplastic stress in plant hosts and the rhizosphere. For that, a search of the literature was conducted on the Web of Science database, recovering 165 unique records, which were screened to 29 eligible papers. AMF mitigated MP stress (27 of 29 studies) by improving plant growth, enhancing nutrient uptake, and alleviating heavy metal stress, highlighting its potential role for biomitigation. Additionally, AMF can improve soil aggregation by the production of glomalin-related soil proteins, contributing to the stabilization of micro- and macroaggregates. To address current gaps and limitations, future approaches should prioritize integrated studies, including investigating MPs’ effects on mean infection percentage (MIP) of the mycorrhizal inoculum, AMF’s role in plant antioxidant response, defense metabolite (terpene, proanthocyanidin, and phenolic acids) accumulation, and interactions between root exudates and the rhizosphere environment, as well as long-term field experiments, to improve the understanding of mycorrhizal mechanisms involved in mitigating the damage caused by microplastics.