Interaction of Tomato Genotypes and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi under Reduced Irrigation

Abstract

Climate change is increasing drought events and decreasing water availability. Tomato is commonly transplanted to an open field after seedling production in a nursery, requiring large volumes of water. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi help plants cope with drought stress; however, their effects depend on plant genotype and environmental conditions. In this study, we assessed the interactions among different tomato seedling genotypes and two AM fungi, Funneliformis mosseae and Rhizophagus intraradices, under two water regimes, full and reduced. Our results showed that F. mosseae was more effective than R. intraradices in the mitigation of drought stress both in old and modern genotypes. However, seedlings inoculated with R. intraradices recorded the highest values of leaf area. ‘Pearson’ and ‘Everton’ genotypes inoculated with F. mosseae recorded the highest values of root, leaf, and total dry weights under reduced and full irrigation regimes, respectively. In addition, ‘Pearson’ and ‘H3402’ genotypes inoculated with F. mosseae under a reduced irrigation regime displayed high values of water use efficiency. Our results highlight the importance of using AM fungi to mitigate drought stress in nursery production of tomato seedlings. However, the development of ad hoc AM fungal formulations, which consider genotype x AM fungi interactions, is fundamental for achieving the best agronomic performances.

Plant Biostimulants in Sustainable Potato Production: an Overview

“…Many factors can influence the effectiveness of microbial plant biostimulants. Some studies reported that the effectiveness of beneficial microorganisms depends on interactions between microorganisms and varieties (Yao et al 2002;Volpato et al 2020), similar to studies carried out on other Solanaceae crops such as tomato (Caradonia et al 2019;Ronga et al 2019b). Under water deficit conditions, potato plants (Table 4) inoculated with R. intraradices showed a higher increase in tuber yield (+34% than uninoculated control) in comparison with potato plants inoculated with C. etunicatum (+16.5% than uninoculated control) (Khosravifar et al 2020).…”

Bioplastic Film from Black Soldier Fly Prepupae Proteins Used as Mulch: Preliminary Results

“…In general, the most pronounced mulching effects reported in the literature concern water savings of up to 25% [33,34]. This characteristic is very important, especially in the cultivation of crops that require a great amount of irrigation, like tomato [35][36][37][38]. Considering the biodegradability, after ten days of mulching, the greatest degradation of the surface area was reported for PBF (~19%).…”

Mycorrhizal symbiosis-induced abiotic stress mitigation through phosphate transporters in Solanum lycopersicum L

“…3 Relative expression of two plasma intrinsic proteins (PIPs) (PIP2.5; PIP2.7) and heat stress-induced genes (HSP70, HSFA2) in the roots of tomato plants under control (C), control with mycorrhizal fungus (CAM), heat (H), heat with mycorrhizal fungus (HAM), water deficit (D), water deficit with mycorrhifungus (DAM), combined (heat + water deficit, HD) and combined with mycorrhizal fungus (heat + water deficit + AM, HDAM) treatments (generated with MS Office). The data shown are mean 2 −ΔΔCт values ± standard deviation (SD); the means followed by the same letter do not differ significantly according two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) combined with Tukey post hoc test (P < 0.05); *, significant at P < 0.05; **, significant at P < 0.01; ***, significant at P < 0.001 AM fungi also promoted plant growth under heat and water deficit stress conditions (Chen et al 2017;Volpe et al 2018;Yeasmin et al 2019;Ronga et al 2019). Regardless of the relatively low mycorrhizal colonization rate, like Cheng et al (2021) did, we also found a positive effect of F. mosseae on tomato growth.…”