Abstract
The development of water stress resistant lines of commercial tomato by breeding or genetic engineering is possible, but will take considerable time before commercial varieties are available for production. However, grafting commercial tomato lines on drought resistant rootstock may produce drought tolerant commercial tomato lines much more rapidly. Due to changing climates and the need for commercial production of vegetables in low quality fields there is an urgent need for stress tolerant commercial lines of vegetables such as tomato. In previous observations we identified a scion root stock combination (‘BHN 602’ scion grafted onto ‘Jjak Kkung’ rootstock hereafter identified as 602/Jjak) that had a qualitative drought-tolerance phenotype when compared to the non-grafted line. Based on this initial observation, we studied photosynthesis and vegetative above-ground growth during mild-drought for the 602/Jjak compared with another scion-rootstock combination (‘BHN 602’ scion grafted onto ‘Cheong Gang’ rootstock hereafter identified as 602/Cheong) and a non-grafted control. Overall above ground vegetative growth was significantly lower for 602/Jjak in comparison to the other plant lines. Moreover, water potential reduction in response to mild drought was significantly less for 602/Jjak, yet stomatal conductance of all plant-lines were equally inhibited by mild-drought. Light saturated photosynthesis of 602/Jjak was less affected by low water potential than the other two lines as was the % reduction in mesophyll conductance. Therefore, the Jjak Kkung rootstock caused aboveground growth reduction, water conservation and increased photosynthetic tolerance of mild drought. These data show that different rootstocks can change the photosynthetic responses to drought of a high yielding, commercial tomato line. Also, this rapid discovery of one scion-rootstock combination that provided mild-drought tolerance suggests that screening more scion-rootstock combination for stress tolerance may rapidly yield commercially viable, stress tolerant lines of tomato.
Highlights
Tomato production is an important aspect of the agricultural economy in the US and other nations
Our goal was to characterize the photosynthetic characteristics of scion-rootstock combinations in relation to vegetative growth characteristics and search for possible physiological factors associated with the mild-drought tolerance of the BHN602/Jjak Kkung scionrootstock combination
We used three different plant lines: 1); BHN 602 non-grafted, 2); BHN 602 scion grafted onto Cheong Gang rootstock, and 3); BHN 602 scion grafted onto Jjak Kkung rootstock
Summary
Tomato production is an important aspect of the agricultural economy in the US and other nations. Insect and disease pests annually challenge tomato fruit productivity and these factors are amplified by global climate change and new regulations on soil fumigant use. Abiotic-stresses such as drought and salinity can cause a major loss for tomato production [1,2,3]. Producers must be equipped with stress tolerant cultivars that maximize production and promote sustainable practices. Breeders have developed new cultivars that have higher photosynthesis and productivity through introgression of the advantageous trait by multiple crosses. The complicated genetic control of traits like photosynthetic response to drought may require years if not decades of breeding for the development of a commercially acceptable cultivar. Having a rapid method to introduce desirable photosynthetic responses to stress for crops would be a tremendous benefit for agriculture in the U.S
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