Comparison of Methods to Extract Spores of Vesicular‐Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi

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Abstract
Vesicular‐arbuscular mycorrhizal spores were extracted from soil (pot cultures) using adhesion‐flotation, sucrose‐centrifugation, gelatin column, wet‐sieve, and a new plating method. Counts of 150‐ to 300‐µm diam spores were significantly higher for the plate method by 528, 370, and 258% than for the adhesion‐flotation, sucrose‐centrifugation, and gelatin column methods, respectively. Counts of 100‐ to 300‐µm diam spores were higher for the plate method by 200 and 149% than for the wet‐sieve and modified wet‐sieve methods. Spore counts within four spore size ranges (50 to 100, 100 to 150, 150 to 300, and > 300 µm diam) were greater for the plate method than for the wet‐sieve and modified wet‐sieve methods by approximately four and two times, respectively. The plate method was consistently higher than the wet‐sieve method only for small spores (50 to 100 µm diam) from soybean field soils. Although the new plate method is not applicable for extracting and quantifying large spores (> 100 µm diam) for low spore population soils (field soils), it is recommended for the purpose of quantifying spores in high population soils (> 20 spores/g) as might be encountered in pot cultures.