Abstract
ABSTRACT Water stress in tomato plants may cause the incidence of blossom-end rot. This study aimed to analyze the effect of abscisic acid leaf application for increasing the calcium uptake in irrigated tomato (‘Santa Clara' cultivar) in the field, as a possible mechanism of blossom-end rot inhibition. The treatments consisted of four irrigation levels (25 %, 50 %, 75 % and 100 % of the crop water requirements to fulfil the crop evapotranspiration) and two abscisic acid doses (0 mg L-1 and 500 mg L-1). The fruits were harvested at 15 and 30 days after the anthesis and evaluated for calcium content and percentage of blossom-end rot. The application of abscisic acid increased the calcium partition to the distal region of the fruits at 30 days after the beginning of flowering, as well as reduced the incidence of blossom-end rot by 86 %, when compared with plants not treated with abscisic acid. It is possible to conclude that the foliar application of abscisic acid can significantly reduce the incidence of blossom-end rot.
Highlights
Calcium (Ca) is a plant nutrient required as a structural component in the cell wall and membranes, counter ion in storage organelles and signalling molecule in the cytosol (White 2001)
In tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum), such conditions may lead to a physiological disorder known as blossom-end rot (Suzuki et al 2003), which is characterized by a water-soaked tissue that eventually becomes dark-brown due to an increase in the membrane permeability, followed by cell plasmolysis and death (Sure 2014)
The results demonstrated that the Abscisic acid (ABA) foliar spray treatment significantly mitigated the blossomend rot incidence in tomato plants grown under field conditions with different water stress levels (Figure 1)
Summary
Calcium (Ca) is a plant nutrient required as a structural component in the cell wall and membranes, counter ion in storage organelles and signalling molecule in the cytosol (White 2001). Conditions that restrict the Ca uptake, such as high salinity, excess or lack of moisture, root diseases, high temperatures and low levels of Ca in the soil, may cause Ca deficiency symptoms in plants (Saure 2014). These symptoms may occur even at ideal levels of Ca in the soil for the normal plant growth and development (Suzuki et al 2003). It is generally accepted that the blossom-end rot occurs due to a lack of Ca in the distal fruit tissue, during early stages of growth and development During these stages, fruit growth takes place mainly by cell expansion (Suzuki et al 2003).
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