Introduction:

Coffee is a highly mycotrophic plant, its interaction with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi has been studied among different tropical countries. The majority of the published works indicates that coffee is benefited from the mycorrhizal association, where the AMF confers protection against pathogens and diseases, increases water absorption, as well as it increases the adaptation of the plant at transplant from nurseries to the main plantation.

Objective:

A review was made where we summarized and analyze the research reports of AMF with coffee from at least the past 10 years, focused on AMF global species distribution, nutritional benefits of the association and interaction with pathogens.

Methods:

We retrieved available bibliographic data from coffee producer countries in public databases. We considered published works from 2000 to 2019, nevertheless, we included classic papers on the topic, outside that period, mainly the ones performed in Brazil since 1986. We organized the number of reported species per country, we look for synonyms, grouped them by family, genera and species. The reports that only reported genera or where ambiguous were used as reference but not considered for the final analysis. We summarized the reports of the benefits of the AMF interaction in coffee, as well as pathogen tolerance.

Results:

The collected data shows that there are more than 100 AMF species associated with coffee, which represents more than a third part of the total of reported species worldwide. We found that Colombia has the highest richness, but it also has the highest number of published reports.

Conclusions:

This information shows the benefits of the incorporation of AMF to coffee plantation programs, because these fungi are a key element in coffee plant nutrition, nevertheless, the coffee variety should be considered when introducing AMF, as not all associations has been efficient.