Table 1.

Important crops and beneficial endophytic fungi with their respective functions.

Agricultural Crop	Beneficial Endophytic Fungi	Function	Reference
Rice	Phoma glomerata, Penicillium simplicissimum, Galactomyces geotrichum, Fusarium oxysporum, Phoma sp., Aspergillus ustus	Growth promoting factors, Salt tolerance, improves mineral nutrition and quality especially, under low nitrogen content in soil, ameliorates crop production.	Tang et al. (2022) and Potshangbam et al. (2017)
Wheat	G. etunicatum, G. intraradices, G. fasciculatum T. atroviride, Glomus spp., Trichoderma atroviride, Alternaria alternata	Improves germination of seed, rate of the shoot and root growth, chlorophyll content, alleviates drought tolerance and ameliorates crop yield.	Qiang et al. (2019), Saxena et al. (2013), and Colla et al. (2015)
Maize	Gibberella fujikuroi, Fusarium oxysporum, Fusarium sacchari, Gibberella intermedia, Trichoderma atroviride, Aspergillus awamori, Metarhizium robertsii, Sarocladium zeae	Plant growth promoting factors, induces disease resistance by improving plant immune response, protects against black cutworm larvae, improves crop yield	Ahmad et al. (2020), Mehmood et al. (2019), Contreras-Cornejo et al. (2018), Potshangbam et al. (2017), and Renuka and Ramanujam (2016)
Citrus	Alternaria alternata, Alternaria citri, Alternaria rosae, Alternaria sp., Aspergillus sp., Colleotrichum karstii, Diaporthe eres, Piriformospora indica, Cladosporium sp., Pseudozyma sp., Meyerozyma sp.	Acts as a biocontrol agent against pathogenic bacteria and fungal species, improved soil quality by enhancing the total phosphatase activity, and better fruit quality due to enhanced macronutrient content.	Cheng et al. (2022), Nicoletti (2019), and Sadeghi et al. (2019)
Banana	Fusarium sp., Phoma sp., Nigrospora sp., Penicillium sp., Colleotichum sp., Piriformospora indica	Tolerance to cold stress, resistance to pathogenic fungi, protects from nematode infection, increases productivity.	Kisaakye et al. (2023), Li et al. (2021), and Zakaria and Aziz (2018)
Soybean	Penicillium minioluteum, Porostereum spadiceum, Rhizopus oryzae, Paecilomyces formosus	Protects from abiotic salinity and thermal stress, helps in promoting photosynthetic activity, improves plant growth by increased macronutrient uptake, disease resistance.	Bilal et al. (2020), Ismail et al. (2020), Bajaj et al. (2018), Hamayun et al. (2017), and Khan et al. (2012)
Tomato	G. intraradices, T. atroviride, Fusarium solani, Pochinia sp., Pythium sp., Piriformospora sp.	Acts as biofertilizers by improving the nitrogen content of the soil, Increases biomass production, counteracts bacterial pathogen attacking the plant	Sinno et al. (2020), Pappas et al. (2018), and Colla et al. (2015)
Potato	Rhizophagus irregularis, Epicoccum nigrum, Curvularia lunata	Mitigates oxidative stress in roots and shoots during plant growth, acts as a biocontrol agent against blackleg disease of potato and has antimicrobial properties.	Deja-Sikora et al. (2020), Bagy et al. (2019), and Avinash et al. (2015)
Sunflower	Penicillium citrinum, Talaromyces assiutensis, Aspergillus terreus, Rhizophus oryzae, Brassica napus, Piriformospora indica	Alleviates thermal stress, disease resistance, act as biocontrol agent against pathogenic fungi, mitigates cadmium toxicity and helps in improving chlorophyll content under stress	Farhat et al. (2023), Ismail et al. (2020), Shahabivand et al. (2017), and Waqas et al. (2015)
Cotton	Penicillium simplicissimum, Leptosphaeria sp., Talaromyces flavus, Acremonium sp., Beauveria bassiana, Purpureocillium lilacinum	Protects against cotton wilt against Verticillium sp., promotes plant growth, protects the host plant against aphid and control crop infestation.	Yuan et al. (2017) and Lopez and Sword (2015)