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Quality
control of commercial arbuscular
mycorrhizal
inoculum
Falko Feldmann1, Carolin Grotkass2 & Christine Boyle1
1 Institute
for Microbiology of the Technical University Braunschweig, Spielmannstr. 8,
D‑38106
Braunschweig, Germany
2 Institute
for Plant Cultivation, Solkau 2, D-29465 Schnega, Germany
In Germany
there are only a few companies which try to produce and sell arbuscular
mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Initiated by the Technical University Braunschweig,
most of them met in December 1997 and founded the "Interessenvertretung
Mykorrhiza-Anwendung im Gartenbau" (Comittee for the Application of
Mycorrhiza in Horticulture). This group identified the lack of a quality
control of AM inoculum as one of the main reasons for the low acceptance of
mycorrhizal technology in horticultural practice.
Different
aspects must be considered when setting the standards for quality control of
arbuscular mycorrhizal inoculum. A customer must be exactly informed a) what he
is going to buy, i.e. which arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, as well as eventual
contaminations the inoculum contains, b) what results he can expect the
inoculum to achieve and c) that the inoculum poses no potential risks to plant
health.
The group
agreed to describe their products with the following recommendations:
Purpose of the product
and how to use it
Content with species
names, strain numbers and production control number of the company
Guarantee of pathogen
free content
Mycorrhizal
effectiveness in a standard test
Maximum dilution of
the content
How to store the
inoculum and recommended dates of usage
In current
research projects, scientists of biotechnical companies and the Technical
University Braunschweig supervise the establishment of a standardized system
for quality control commencing with the inoculum production process and ending
with the description of the product on a documentation sheet for customers.