Inhibition of Growth and Aflatoxin Production in L. Using Endophytic .

infection of vegetative tissues can affect the development and integrity of the plant and poses dangerous risks on human and animal health. Thus, safe and easily applied approaches are employed to inhibit . To this end, the fungal endophyte, i.e., was used as a safe biocontrol agent to reduce the growth of and its infection in maize seedlings. Interestingly, the safe endophytic exhibited antifungal activity (e.g., 77% of growth inhibition) against It also reduced the creation of aflatoxins, particularly aflatoxin B (AFB, 90.9%). At plant level, maize seedling growth, leaves and root anatomy and the changes in redox status were estimated. Infected seeds treated with significantly improved the germination rate by 88.53%. The ultrastructure of the infected leaves showed severe disturbances in the internal structures, such as lack of differentiation in cells, cracking, and lysis in the cell wall and destruction in the nucleus semi-lysis of chloroplasts. Ultrastructure observations indicated that treatment increased maize (leaf and root) cell wall thickness that consequentially reduced the invasion of the pathogenic . It was also interesting that the infected seedlings recovered after being treated with , as it was observed in growth characteristics and photosynthetic pigments. Moreover, infected maize plants showed increased oxidative stress (lipid peroxidation and HO), which was significantly mitigated by treatment. This mitigation was at least partially explained by inducing the antioxidant defense system, i.e., increased phenols and proline levels (23.3 and 31.17%, respectively) and POD, PPO, SOD and CAT enzymes activity (29.50, 57.58, 32.14 and 29.52%, respectively). Overall, our study suggests that endophytic treatment could be commercially used for the safe control of aflatoxins production and for inducing biotic stress tolerance of -infected maize plants.