Raffaella Maria Balestrini

• PhD
• CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche at Italian National Research Council

Like other plant-microbe symbioses, the establishment of orchid mycorrhiza (ORM) is likely to require specific communication and metabolic adjustments between the two partners. However, while modulation of plant and fungal metabolism has been investigated in fully established mycorrhizal tissues, the molecular changes occurring during the pre-symbi...

Plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) are vital for enhancing plant growth, productivity, and sustainability in agriculture, also addressing food security challenges. The plant growth-promoting (PGP) potential of ten bacterial strains, isolated from a cultivated field in southern Italy, was characterized with biochemical and molecular analyses and...

Pot size is a critical factor in plant growth experiments, influencing root architecture, nutrient uptake, and overall plant development as well as sensing of stress. In controlled environments, variation in pot size can impact phenotypic and molecular outcomes and may bias experimental results. Here, we investigated how pot size affects the root s...

Agrivoltaics, integrating photovoltaic systems with crop cultivation, demands semitransparent solar modules to mitigate soil shadowing. Perovskite Solar Cells (PSC) offer competitive efficiency, low fabrication costs, and high solar transmittance, making them suitable for agrivoltaic applications. However, the impact of PSC light filtering on plant...

Introduction Plant growth and metabolism can be optimized by manipulating light intensity and wavelength. Since the use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) allows easy regulation of the light spectrum, LEDs technology is largely tested to produce high-quality food. Red leaf chicory is a horticultural plant of high commercial value, rich in vitamins, mi...

Grapevine is an economically important crop, affected by major production losses due to high virus prevalence. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can reduce the impact of plant biotic stresses. However, hormonal response to the simultaneous presence of viruses and AMF remains largely unknown. In this study, we explored the potential of AMF to modif...

The threats posed by climate change on agriculture at a global scale have fostered researchers to explore new and efficient strategies to ensure stable and safe food production. These new strategies must not only be efficient in reducing yield loss but also comply with environmental and consumer safety regulations, which particularly refer to restr...

Urbanization exacerbates soil degradation, compromising global soil health and biodiversity. To reduce this, strategies for soil de-sealing and bioremediation are necessary. In a mesocosm experiment using a de-sealed soil from an urban site as substrate, an inoculum of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and two cover plants, Cynara cardunculus L. a...

Cross‐kingdom RNA interference (ckRNAi) is a mechanism of interspecies communication where small RNAs (sRNAs) are transported from one organism to another; these sRNAs silence target genes in trans by loading into host AGO proteins. In this work, we investigated the occurrence of ckRNAi in Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis (AMS). We used an in silic...

Priming modulates plant stress responses before the stress appears, increasing the ability of the primed plant to endure adverse conditions and thrive. In this context, we investigated the effect of biological (i.e., arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, AMF) agents and natural compounds (i.e., salicylic acid applied alone or combined with chitosan) agains...

Salinity stress represents a key factor for global agriculture. Plants can respond to salinity stress by adapting their physiology in different ways with the aim of limiting reductions in growth and development. Importantly, moisture retention capacity, permeability and nutrient availability of substrates represent critical variables for plants as...

Plants rely on solar energy for growth through photosynthesis, yet excessive light intensity can induce physiological damage. Despite the considerable harm, inadequate attention has been directed toward understanding how plant‐associated microorganisms mitigate this stress, and the impact of high light intensity on plant microbial communities remai...

In nature, germination of orchid seeds and early plant development rely on a symbiotic association with orchid mycorrhizal (ORM) fungi. These fungi provide the host with the necessary nutrients and facilitate the transition from embryos to protocorms. Despite recent advances in omics technologies, our understanding of this symbiosis remains limited...

Intercropping, based on the interplay between cereals and legumes, might be an encouraging approach to improve soil fertility and crop productivity and to guarantee more sustainable farming systems. However, plant consociation is also influenced by the interaction between roots and soil microbial communities, and different plant genotypes might dif...

The stress that the space environment can induce on plant physiology is of both abiotic and biotic nature. The abiotic space environment is characterized by ionizing radiation and altered gravity, geomagnetic field (GMF), pressure, and light conditions. Biotic interactions include both pathogenic and beneficial interactions. Here, we provide an ove...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) have been shown to improve plant host tolerance to biotic stresses. However, AMF-mediated protection against virus diseases have been highly variable and poorly investigated in perennial crops. In this study, we investigated the influence of AMF on virus concentration and distribution in grapevine coinfected with...

This study aims to elucidate if the regulation of plant aquaporins by the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis occurs only in roots or cells colonized by the fungus or at whole root system. Maize plants were cultivated in a split‐root system, with half of the root system inoculated with the AM fungus and the other half uninoculated. Plant growth a...

Background and aims The use of root-associated microorganisms emerge as a sustainable tool to enhance crop tolerance and productivity under climate change, particularly in drought-affected areas. Here, the impact of an inoculum based on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) was evaluated on pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) cultivation at varying water irri...

In the last years, heavy metal (HM) pollution has spread across natural and anthropic ecosystems posing inevitable, serious health risks. Commitments to resolve this issue resulted in tightening regulations and calls to action. The use of plants and their symbionts for remediation enjoys support. Nonetheless, keystones between mycorrhizal research...

Plants have evolved various belowground traits to adapt to the changing environments, and root-associated soil microbes play a crucial role in the response, adaptation, and resilience to adverse environmental conditions. This comprehensive review explores the diverse interactions between plants and soil microbes, focusing on the role of root-associ...

Currently, salinization is impacting more than 50% of arable land, posing a significant challenge to agriculture globally. Salt causes osmotic and ionic stress, determining cell dehydration, ion homeostasis, and metabolic process alteration, thus negatively influencing plant development. A promising sustainable approach to improve plant tolerance t...

Fusariosis causes substantial yield losses in the wheat crop worldwide and compromises food safety because of the presence of toxins associated with the fungal disease. Among the current approaches to crop protection, the use of elicitors able to activate natural defense mechanisms in plants is a strategy gaining increasing attention. Several studi...

This article is a Commentary on Chrismas et al. (2024), 241: 2243–2257.

Soil functionality is critical to the biosphere as it provides ecosystem services relevant for a healthy planet. The soil microbial composition is significantly impacted by anthropogenic activities, including urbanization. In this context, the study of soil microorganisms associated to urban green spaces has started to be crucial toward sustainable...

Plant physiological status is the interaction between the plant genome and the prevailing growth conditions. Accurate characterization of plant physiology is, therefore, fundamental to effective plant phenotyping studies; particularly those focused on identifying traits associated with improved yield, lower input requirements, and climate resilienc...

Introduction Food crops are increasingly susceptible to the challenging impacts of climate change, encompassing both abiotic and biotic stresses, that cause yield losses. Root-associated microorganisms, including plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB), can improve plant growth as well as plant tolerance to environmental stresses. The aims of this w...

Despite microbe-based products for grapevine protection and growth improvement are already available, a few of them contain microbes directly isolated from vine tissues. For this reason, a collection of endophytic bacterial isolates obtained directly from grapevine woody tissues has been used for producing an ad-hoc inoculum. The selected bacterial...

Legumes improve soil fertility by interacting symbiotically with nitrogen-fixing rhizobia allocated in root nodules. Some bacterial endophytes can coexist with rhizobia in nodules and might help legumes by enhancing stress tolerance, producing hormones stimulating plant growth, and increasing plant nutrient intake. Twenty-six bacterial endophytes f...

Arbuscular (AM) and orchid (OrM) mycorrhiza are the most widespread mycorrhizal symbioses among flowering plants, formed by distinct fungal and plant species. They are both endosymbioses because the fungal hyphae can enter inside the plant cell to develop intracellular fungal structures that are surrounded by the plant membrane. The symbiotic plant...

Cross-kingdom RNA interference (ckRNAi) is a mechanism of interspecies communication where small RNAs (sRNAs) are transported from one organism to another, where they silence target genes in trans1-9. ckRNAi is well established in pathosystems1-9 and has also been observed in a small number of mutualistic interactions10,11. Fungal and oomycete path...

Beneficial microorganisms, such as mycorrhizal fungi, rhizobia, endophytes, and plant growth-promoting bacteria, can positively affect plant fitness. Particularly, mycorrhizal fungi improve plant health acquiring more nutrients and enhancing the tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses, in return for carbon compounds. In addition, inoculation with...

Quercus ilex L. dieback has been reported in several Mediterranean forests, revealing different degree of crown damages even in close sites, as observed in two Q. ilex forest stands in southern Tuscany (IT). In this work, we applied a novel approach combining dendrochronological, tree-ring δ13C and genetic analysis to test the hypothesis that diffe...

Orchid mycorrhiza (OM) represents an unusual symbiosis between plants and fungi because in all orchid species carbon is provided to the host plant by the mycorrhizal fungus at least during the early stages of orchid development, named a protocorm. In addition to carbon, orchid mycorrhizal fungi provide the host plant with essential nutrients such a...

The main purpose of this paper is to compare the actual transpiration rates from tomato crop, as measured at leaf scale and estimated by a macroscopic approach in an agro-hydrological model, named FLOWS-HAGES, under variable soil properties and water availability. To this aim, sixteen plots were cultivated with tomatoes in Metaponto, Southern Italy...

In nature, orchid seed germination and early development both require an interaction between the plant and some symbiotic fungi capable of forming orchid mycorrhizae (OM). In recent years, the use of -omics approaches has been instrumental to start elucidating the molecular mechanisms of this important symbiosis. Transcriptomics is one of the most...

Legumes maintain soil fertility thanks to their associated microbiota but are threatened by climate change that causes soil microbial community structural and functional modifications. The core microbiome associated with different chickpea and lentil genotypes was described after an unexpected climatic event. Results showed that chickpea and lentil...

Title "Induced Systemic Response in Plants against Biotic Stress" Edited by Chetan Keswani, Raffaella Balestrini, Tatiana Minkina, Satyendra Singh, Ugo De Corato, Estibaliz Sansinenea Description Microbial biopesticides reduce disease incidence by triggering host response. This phenomenon is known as Induced Systemic Resistance (ISR). During this...

The negative effects of viruses and the positive effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) on grapevine performance are well reported, in contrast to the knowledge about their interactive effects in perennial plants, e.g., in grapevine. To elucidate the physiological consequences of grapevine–AMF–virus interactions, two different AMF inoculum (...

In 2021, 828 million people were suffering from chronic hunger (and un-dernourishment) globally (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2022), while, as of March 2023 across 89 countries, 651 million people do not have sufficient food on their plates (The HungerMap LIVE , 2023). High levels of crop loss (at both pre-and post-harvest stages) add to the sev...

Over the last few decades, extensive dieback and mortality episodes of Quercus ilex L. have been documented after severe drought events in many Mediterranean forests. However, the underlying physiological, anatomical, and biochemical mechanisms remain poorly understood. We investigated the physiological and biochemical processes linked to embolism...

Soil salinity is among the major abiotic stresses that plants must face, mainly in arid and semiarid re-gions, and high salinity tolerance is an important agronomic trait to sustain food production. Agricul-tural soils are unstable and subject to changes in salinity level, and monitoring them at both the local and the regional scale is a relevant a...

Soil salinity is among the major abiotic stresses that plants must face, mainly in arid and semiarid re-gions, and high salinity tolerance is an important agronomic trait to sustain food production. Agricul-tural soils are unstable and subject to changes in salinity level, and monitoring them at both the local and the regional scale is a relevant a...

The plant domestication process led to crops with strongly modified growth-defense tradeoff features, and crops that were much more pampered in terms of nutrition, irrigation and defense measures, showing less ability to trigger adaptation strategies with respect to their wild relatives. It is worth noting that plants are not alone, they share thei...

Under the era of climate change, plants are forced to survive under increasingly adverse conditions. Application of biostimulants in plants is shown to mitigate the deleterious effects of abiotic stresses including salinity, enhancing plant tolerance and performance. The present study focuses on the effects of five biostimulants based on biocompost...

Carotenoid cleavage, catalyzed by CAROTENOID CLEAVAGE DIOXYGENASEs (CCDs), provides signaling molecules and precursors of plant hormones. Recently, we showed that zaxinone, a apocarotenoid metabolite formed by the CCD ZAXINONE SYNTHASE (ZAS), is a growth regulator required for normal rice (Oryza sativa) growth and development. The rice genome encod...

Modern agriculture relies on the extensive use of chemicals to combat plant diseases and increase agricultural productivity which leads to health and environmental hazards. In the recent past, soil microorganisms, such as the plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) or rhizobacteria (PGPR), have emerged as a promising tool for eco-friendly alternativ...

Olea europaea L. is a glycophyte representing one of the most important plants in the Mediterranean area, both from an economic and agricultural point of view. Its adaptability to different environmental conditions enables its cultivation in numerous agricultural scenarios, even on marginal areas, characterized by soils unsuitable for other crops....

In the context of the climate change scenario in the Mediterranean, natural root-microorganism associations have an impact on the resilience and productivity of crops, and the exploitation of these interactions represents innovative, cost-effective and sustainable crop adaptation strategies. An open field experiment with two commercial Italian toma...

Environmental stresses can compromise the interactions of plants with beneficial microbes. In the present review, experimental results showing that stresses negatively affect the abundance and/or functionality of plant beneficial microbes are summarised. It is proposed that the environmental interference of these plant‐microbe interactions is expla...

The rice carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase OsZAS was described to produce zaxinone, a novel plant‐growth promoting apocarotenoid. A zas mutant line showed a reduced arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) colonization but the mechanisms underlying this behavior are unknown. Here, we investigated how OsZAS and exogenous zaxinone treatment regulate mycorrhization....

In the past years, breeding programs have been mainly addressed on pushing the commercial features, forgetting important traits, such as those related to environmental stress resilience, that are instead present in wild relatives. Among the traits neglected by breeding processes, the ability to recruit beneficial microorganisms that recently is rec...

Carotenoid cleavage, catalyzed by CAROTENOID CLEAVAGE DIOXYGENASES (CCDs), provides signaling molecules and precursors of plant hormones. Recently, we showed that zaxinone, a novel apocarotenoid metabolite formed by the CCD Zaxinone Synthase (ZAS), is a growth regulator required for normal rice growth and development. The rice genome encodes three...

Domestication processes, amplified by breeding programs, have allowed the selection of more productive genotypes and more suitable crop lines capable of coping with the changing climate. Notwithstanding these advancements, the impact of plant breeding on the ecology of plant–microbiome interactions has not been adequately considered yet. This inclu...

Tuber magnatum Picco is a greatly appreciated truffle species mainly distributed in Italy. Its price and characteristics mostly depend on its geographical origin. Truffles represent a fundamental step of the life cycle of Tuber species promoting spore dissemination. They consist of two main parts, gleba, the inner part, and peridium, which is in di...

Grifola frondosa (“Maitake”) is an edible fungus with several nutraceutical properties, largely used in traditional medicine. The increased use of Maitake as a food supplements ingredient raised the need of accurate authentication methods since the morphological identification of G. frondosa is not feasible in formulated food supplements. We develo...

Roots of the European hazelnut (Corylus avellana), i.e., one of the most economically important nut species, form symbiosis with ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi, including truffles. Although physical interactions only occur in roots, the presence of mycorrhizal fungi can lead to metabolic changes at systemic level, i.e., in leaves. However, how root co...

Since the first experiments in 1950s, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations of filamentous fungi have contributed extensively to understand their structure and to reveal the mechanisms of apical growth. Additionally, also in combination with the use of affinity techniques (such as the gold complexes), several aspects of plant-fungal i...

Nowadays, the worldwide agriculture is experiencing a transition process toward more sustainable production, which requires the reduction of chemical inputs and the preservation of microbiomes’ richness and biodiversity. Plants are no longer considered as standalone entities, and the future of agriculture should be grounded on the study of plant-as...

During the last years, a great effort has been dedicated at the development and employment of diverse approaches for achieving more stress-tolerant and climate-flexible crops and sustainable yield increases to meet the food and energy demands of the future. The ongoing climate change is in fact leading to more frequent extreme events with a negativ...

It is well known that AM symbiosis provides several ecosystem services leading to plant adaptation in different environmental conditions and positively affects physiological and production features. Although beneficial effects from grapevine and AM fungi interactions have been reported, the impact on growth-defence tradeoff features has still to be...

In the past 20 years, laser microdissection (LMD) technology has been widely applied to plant tissues, allowing to obtain new information on the role of different cell-type populations during plant development and interactions, including plant-pathogen interactions. The application of a LMD approach allowed verifying the response of plant and patho...

Trichoderma atroviride (Ascomycota, Sordariomycetes) is a well-known mycoparasite applied for protecting plants against fungal pathogens. Its mycoparasitic activity involves processes shared with plant and human pathogenic fungi such as the production of cell wall degrading enzymes and secondary metabolites and is tightly regulated by environmental...

Significant variation in epidermal bladder cells (EBC) density and salt tolerance (ST) exists amongst quinoa accessions, suggesting that salt sequestration in EBCs is not the only mechanism conferring ST in this halophyte. In order to reveal other traits that may operate in tandem with salt sequestration in EBCs and whether these additional toleran...

Herbs are processed by drying to decrease the moisture content and therefore to inhibit the growth of microorganisms, reducing the alterations during the storage and creating shelf-stable products. The drying of aromatic herbs has been carried out over the years as convective drying with hot air but information on the impact of this process at cell...

Soil salinity is among the major abiotic stresses that plants must cope with, mainly in arid and semiarid regions. The tolerance to high salinity is an important agronomic trait to sustain food production. Quinoa is a halophytic annual pseudo‐cereal species with high nutritional value that can secrete salt out of young leaves in external non‐glandu...

Plant specialized metabolites (SMs) play an important role in the interaction with the environment and are part of the plant defense response. These natural products are volatile, semi-volatile and non-volatile compounds produced from common building blocks deriving from primary metabolic pathways and rapidly evolved to allow a better adaptation of...

Agricultural sustainability is an increasing need considering the challenges posed by climate change and rapid human population growth. The use of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) may represent an excellent, new agriculture practice to improve soil quality while promoting growth and yield of important crop species subjected to water stre...

Background: It is known that breastfeeding protects the infant from enteric and respiratory infections; however, the antiviral properties of human milk against enteric and respiratory viruses are largely unexplored. Research aims: To explore the antiviral activity of human preterm colostrum against rotavirus and respiratory syncytial virus and t...

The study of orchid mycorrhizal interactions is particularly complex because of the peculiar life cycle of these plants and their diverse trophic strategies. Here, transcriptomics has been applied to investigate gene expression in the mycorrhizal roots of Limodorum abortivum, a terrestrial mixotrophic orchid that associates with ectomycorrhizal fun...

Arbutus unedo (the strawberry tree) is a Mediterranean shrub which forms arbutoid mycorrhizae with a variety of Asco-and Basidiomycetes. After the discovery of the mycorrhizal symbiosis between A. unedo and Tuber borchii, in this study, arbutoid mycorrhizae were synthetized in greenhouse with Tuber aestivum and Tuber melanosporum. Six months after...

Roasting is known to affect the protein profile and allergenicity of hazelnuts (Corylus avellana cv TGL). The aim of the study was to investigate whether roasting techniques based on different heat transfer methods (hot air and infrared), differently affect the protein solubility and the IgE-binding capacities of both the soluble and insoluble haze...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are root symbionts that provide mineral nutrients to the host plant in exchange for carbon compounds. AM fungi positively affect several aspects of plant life, improving nutrition and leading to a better growth, stress tolerance, and disease resistance and they interact with most crop plants such as cereals, hortic...

Viticulture is one of the horticultural systems in which antifungal treatments can be extremely frequent, with substantial economic and environmental costs. New products, such as biofungicides, resistance inducers and biostimulants, may represent alternative crop protection strategies respectful of the environmental sustainability and food safety....

All orchids rely on mycorrhizal fungi for organic carbon, at least during early development. In fact, orchid seed germination leads to the formation of a protocorm, a heterotrophic postembryonic structure colonized by intracellular fungal coils, thought to be the site of nutrient transfer. The molecular mechanisms underlying mycorrhizal interaction...