Glomalin and its roles in soil ecosystem: a review

Glomalin, abundant in soil, is a special glycoprotein with good thermostability produced by Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.Glomalin has attracted more and more attention due to its roles in forming soil aggregates, improving the stability of the aggregates, enhancing the soil organic carbon, increasing the stress resilience of plant and reducing the toxicity of heavy metals in the soil.Currently, because of the limitation of glomalin extraction method, the name of Glomalin has been changed into the Glomalin related soil protein (GRSP).The roles of GRSP in the soil ecosystem have been extensively investigated with the research progress.GRSP has a strong cementing effect on soil particles and its cementing capacity is 3~10 times higher than other cementing substances; it contributes 6.98%~31.3% of soil organic carbon pool with a longer turnover time of 6~42 years in the soil; it can also sequester different heavy metals to reduce their toxic effects in the soil and reduce potential toxicity.However, a deeper understanding of the GRSP roles in the ecosystem further understanding of its structure and optimization of extraction and measurement methods is required.This paper summarized the roles of GRSP in soil aggregates and soil organic carbon pools in domestic and international research, and highlighted the main problems in GRSP research and their future research.