46 Khaled A. Selim, Mohamed M. S. Nagia and Dina E. El. Ghwas
distribution and plant survival is affected by the common complexity of verity
of microbial communities with the host plant (Iqbal et al., 2013). The unity of
microbes with plants dates back to more than 400 million years ago therefore,
the existence of symbiotic microorganisms in the internal parts of plant tissues
look to be the rule and not exception (Strobel et al., 2004 and Partida-Martínez
and Heil, 2011).
Figure 1. Endophytic biology is studied with the aim of bioprospection of genuine
microbial products, potential host metabolites and industrially important volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) or to understand the principles of endophytism and its
consequences on the secondary metabolism of the partners as well as adaption of the
plant host to biotic and abiotic stress conditions.
The ecological roles of endophytic fungi are various and multiple.
Endophytic have been qualified as mutualists that prevent both conifers and
grasses from attack by insect. Besides, a lot of these fungi release biologically
active secondary metabolites. Other researches proved that, there are more
than 30% of compounds produced by endophytic fungi have antifungal and