This pioneering book focuses on Neotropical endophytic fungi, providing a comprehensive overview of their diversity, ecology, and biotechnological applications in medicine, agriculture, and industry. Despite their rich diversity, the endophytic fungi associated with plants of Central and South American biomes remain largely unknown. The book addresses that knowledge gap by offering insights into Neotropic endophytic fungal community.

Endophytic fungi are important biotechnological tools because they produce many secondary metabolites. However, to access this important source of bioactive molecules, it is essential to explore the diversity of endophytic fungi and catalog their species richness in different ecosystems. This book reviews the diversity, characterisation and biocontrol of endophytic fungi.

The leaf surface or phyllosphere is a major habitat for microorganisms. Microbes on or within leaves play important roles in plant ecology, and these microbes can be manipulated to enhance plant growth or reduce plant disease. This book presents a number of critical reviews by internationally recognized experts on the microbial ecology of leaves. Topics include methods of assessment of microbial populations on leaf surfaces, leaves as reservoirs of ice nucleation phenomenon, and leaves as microbial habitats in both aquatic and terrestrial environments. The book will be of interest to students and scientists in numerous disciplines, including botany, aerobiology, meteorology, ecology, agriculture, and microbiology.

This is the first book dedicated to the interactions of non-mycorrhizal microbial endophytes with plant roots. The phenotypes of these interactions can be extremely plastic, depending on environmental factors, nutritional status, genetic disposition and developmental stages of the two partners. This book explores diversity, life history strategies, interactions, applications in agriculture and forestry, methods for isolation, cultivation, and both conventional and molecular methods for identification and detection of these endophytes.

Endophytic Fungi: The Full Story of the Untapped Treasure covers the developments in endophytic fungal research from beginning to the end by the eminent researchers involved in the field. It sheds light on the endophytic fungal current research, challenges, and future possibilities, the trending recent topics in the plant-fungal endophytes' biodynamics for sustainable development of bioproducts and its applications are supported in large-scale biosynthesis of industrially and pharmaceutical important biomolecules.Endophytic Fungi: The Full Story of the Untapped Treasure highlights the bioprospecting and applied aspects of endophytic fungal communities from diverse hosts and discusses the practical applications of such endophytes in detail. It also reviews recent strategies on alternative sustainable sources of medicines such as secondary metabolites of fungi instead of over collection of plants under prohibiting of biodiversity conventions. The uniqueness of this book is the inclusion of updated bioinformatics-based strategies and its importance in bioactive molecules produced by endophytic fungi. The book addresses one of the most eminent issues in this field: how to translate the potential that endophytic fungi hold in stable practical application. - Covers major concepts of plant-fungi interaction, biodiversity of endophytic fungi from diverse and biotechnological applications for sustainable development - Is extensively illustrated and clearly written, using easy-to-understand language, sharing the latest developments and potential of fungal products for various applications - Sheds light on the endophytic fungal current research, challenges, and future possibilities

Examining intercellular infections in certain plant species that lead to a symbiotic relationship between the host and its endophytic microbes, this volume demonstrates the ability of many types of endosymbionts, acting as a unit with hosts to better survive, compete and reproduce. Practical applications of such endophytes are also discussed, for e

The roles of microbes in agriculture, industry and environment have been the point of interest since long time for their potential exploitation. Although only a fraction of microbial diversity was accessed by microbiologists earlier for harnessing them owing to limited techniques available. The molecular techniques have opened new vistas to access the wide field of the unexplored microbes and their exploitation for useful genes and novel metabolites. Sincere efforts have been made in biotechnology using microbes leading to improve our life with respect to agriculture and people health. This comprehensive volume covers different aspects of microbial biotechnology and its management in sustainable agriculture for food security and improved human health. The book comprises four sections: Endophytes and Mycorrhizae, Microbial Diversity and Plant Protection, Microbial Functions and Biotechnology, and Microbes and the Environment, which contain 53 chapters. The book examines the aspects on endophytes and mycorrhizae, bioactive compounds, growth promoting microorganisms, disease management with emphasis on biocontrol, genetics of disease resistance, microbial enzymes, advances in potential of microbes and their industrial as well as pharmaceutical applications. In addition, the use of botanicals, and the etiology and management of medicinal and aromatic plants in the post harvest management have been reviewed in greater depth for the benefit of teaching and research community. The biotechnological developments using microbe potential have enabled us combat the environment and human health problems worldwide in ecofriendly manner. We are sure that this volume will be highly useful to all those concerned with fungi, bacteria, viruses and their biology, including environmental and public health officers and professionals in the field of interest. The volume is an exhaustive coverage of almost all the aspects of microbial biology and biotechnology.

This book chapters covers with various Microbiology fields like Bacteriology, Mycology, Protozoology, Phycology, Parasitology, Immunology, Virology, Nematology, Microbial Biotechnology etc.,

This book draws the reader into the latest debate on fungal diversity and the concept of lichen symbiosis. Chapters of this book cohere around four general themes: endolichenic fungi, isolation and culture, identification and bioactive potential. This is a highly informative book providing scientific insight for scholars interested in lichens and fungi. This research intrigues readers with this fascinating and less known fungal community residing inside lichens and arouses curiosity among lichenologists and mycologists about these fungi and their potential. This treatise provokes debate on the definition of lichen and its compositional organisms and invites further investigations on this topic by adding to the scholarly debate with various new perspectives on endolichenic fungi in the last chapter. Not only this, it also clarifies the differences between endolichenic fungi, mycorrhiza and lichenicolous fungi and the fungi found freely in air, water and soil and contributes to the development of the new field of endolichenic fungi. This book supports readers to build their knowledge through helpful case studies conducted throughout the globe and plentiful figures and illustrations and chemical structures of the novel compounds harvested from endolichenic fungi. This book covers both classical and cutting-edge technologies in the field of endolichenic fungi and offers step-by-step procedures for isolation and identification of endolichenic fungi and further contributes in how one can harvest the secondary metabolites from endolichenic fungi. This book shares the knowledge of some highly experienced authorities in the field of lichenology, mycology and endolichenic fungi and offers a first stop for specialists who need information about particular aspects in the field of endolichenic fungi. This research will equip researchers, professors, professionals working in this field to understand lichens and its intricate internal ecosystem with a fresh perspective and also enables readers to explore further through annotated references to other works.

Historically, tropical ecology has been a science often content with descriptive and demographic approaches, which is understandable given the difficulty of studying these ecosystems and the need for basic demographic information. Nonetheless, over the last several years, tropical ecologists have begun to test more sophisticated ecological theory and are now beginning to address a broad array of questions that are of particular importance to tropical systems, and ecology in general. Why are there are so many species in tropical forests and what mechanisms are responsible for the maintenance of that vast species diversity? What factors control species coexistence? Are there common patterns of species abundance and distribution across broad geographic scales? What is the role of trophic interactions in these complex ecosystems? How can these fragile ecosystems be conserved? Containing contributions from some of the world’s leading tropical ecologists, Tropical Forest Community Ecology provides a summary of the key issues in the discipline of tropical ecology: Includes contributions from some of the world’s leading tropical ecologists Covers patterns of species distribution, the maintenance of species diversity, the community ecology of tropical animals, forest regeneration and conservation of tropical ecosystems