Optimization of growth and biomass production in the endophytic fungus Piriformospora indica

The endophytic fungus Piriformospora indica increases nutrient uptake in plants and allows plants to survive under biotic and abiotic stresses. This fungus stimulates growth and seed production of plants and increases the secondary metabolite contents of medicinal plants. There is little information on cultivation of symbiotic fungi therefore the development of methods to the mass culture of symbiotic fungi is very importance for practical applications. The aim of this study was to reveal a simple culture medium to higher biomass production for this fungus.
A comparison of YPG simple medium and Kafer Complex medium was carried out on the dry weight of fungus. Then Taguchi method was used to design experiments for medium optimization to determine the effect of four factors including glucose, yeast extract and peptone concentrations, and pH on the fungal biomass production in a non-continuous culture.
Comparison of the growth curve of the fungus in both the Kafer and YPG media showed that P. indica growth was better and higher in YPG medium. After optimization of YPG medium, biomass production was reached to 19/3 g.L-1 in compared with the initial amount i.e. 16/2 g.L-1.
Our results suggested that YPG medium can be used as a suitable medium to P. indica industrial production for agricultural application, due to the higher biomass production of P. indica in YPG medium by 2.5-fold and its low cost in compare to Kafer medium.