Abstract
Tomato is often exposed to diverse abiotic stresses and cold stress is one of harsh environmental stresses. Abnormal low temperature affects tomato growth and development, leading to, e.g., physiological disorders, flower drops, and abnormal fruit morphology, and causing a decrease in tomato yield and fruit quality. It is important to identify low temperature-(LT) tolerant tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) cultivars relying on different fruit types. In this study, our focus was to analyze the physiological traits of 35 tomato accessions with three different fruit types (cherry, medium, and large sizes) under night temperature set-points of 15 °C for control temperature (CT) and 10 °C for LT, respectively. Plant heights (PH) of most tomato accessions in LT were remarkably decreased compared to those in CT. The leaf length (LL) and leaf width (LW) were reduced depending on the genotypes under LT. In addition, the number of fruits (NFR), fruit set (FS), fruit yield (FY), and marketable yield (MY) were negatively affected in LT. The variation was further investigated by the correlation, the principal component (PCA), and the cluster analysis. Interestingly, positive correlations between different vegetative and reproductive traits were uncovered. Multivariate analysis including the PCA and hierarchical clustering classified the LT-treated 35 tomato accessions into four major groups. The identified accessions were associated with vegetative and reproductive parameters on positive directions. The results might be utilized for establishing breeding programs on selecting LT-tolerant tomato cultivars with different selection indices relying on fruit types during vegetative and/or reproductive stages.
Highlights
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is the most essential horticultural vegetable in the world, providing vitamin A and C, rich minerals, low calories, lycopene, and β-carotene [1]
We investigated the physiological traits of 35 tomato genotypes with different fruit types, which were grown in two different greenhouse conditions with night temperature set-points at 10 ◦C for low temperature (LT) and 15 ◦C for control treatment (CT), respectively, and analyzed the vegetative parameters of plant height (PH), stem diameter (SD) leaf length (LL), and leaf width (LW) and the reproductive parameters of number of flowers (NFL), number of fruits (NFR), fruit set (FS), fruit yield (FY), and marketable yield (MY) with different fruit types through the correlation coefficient, principal component (PCA), and cluster analysis
To study the vegetative traits including plant height (PH), stem diameter (SD), leaf length (LL), and leaf width (LW) of tomato plants under LT condition, we analyzed 35 tomato accessions with different fruit types classified into wild, cherry, medium, and large fruit size (Table S1)
Summary
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is the most essential horticultural vegetable in the world, providing vitamin A and C, rich minerals, low calories, lycopene, and β-carotene [1]. Due to global warming and climate changes, the unpredictable agriculture weather, such as low and high temperatures, has critically limited the yields and the area of agricultural cultivation of tomato plants [3,4,5]. Tomato plant is one of sessile organisms, which experiences multiple abiotic stresses including cold stress, heat stress, high salinity stress, and drought stress during the periods of vegetative and reproductive growth [6,7,8]. Low temperature (LT) is a critical factor for maintaining and improving the crop yield of tomato plants during the periods of growth and development stages [3,4]. The relationships of the same traits during either vegetative or reproductive stages have been investigated, but the correlation of vegetative traits with reproductive traits remains unexplored under LT condition
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