Evaluation of Drought and Cold Treatments on Growth and Yield of Tomato in Field Conditions

علوم باغبانی

Article 13, Volume 34, Issue 1 - Serial Number 45, June 2020, Pages 171-183   

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: 10.22067/jhorts4.v34i1.82485

Authors

Fardin Ghanbari^{* 1}; Mohammad Sayyari²

¹Department of Horticultural Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Ilam University, Ilam, Iran

²Department of Horticultural Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Bu Ali Sina University, Hamadan, Iran

Abstract

Introduction: Due to its low level of calorie and being as an excellent source of C and A vitamins as well as containing lycopene as a powerful antioxidant, Tomato (solanum lycopersicum, 2n=2 x=24), is extensively consumed in the world. According to the statistics presented in 2013, following China, United States, Turkey and Egypt, Iran ranked sixth in tomato production (6174182 kg per year) world tomato production. Similar to other tropical crops, tomato is sensitive to chilling stress. The chilling stress is considered as one of the environmental factors influencing growth and development of many plants including tomato. Applying different environmental conditions and cultivation techniques within transplant production can mitigate the chilling stress of seedlings. The seedling hardening is one of the simple technique being employed to physiological characters of plant, so as to induce subsequent stress resistance. This phenomenon is so-called cross tolerance and it means that exposing plants to stressful conditions can induce plant tolerance to upcoming stresses. Therefore, the objective of our study was to investigate the effect of drought hardening and chilling stress on tomato plant growth and productivity in field condition.
Materials and Methods: This experiment was conducted in greenhouse and research laboratories of agricultural college of Bu Ali Sina University. First of all, the seeds of tomato cv. C.H Falat, were sown in pots filled with perlite and vermiculite (ratio 2:1) and then maintained under natural light and at 25±2°C / 18±2°C (day/night). At four-leaf full development stage, seedlings were subjected to seven-day drought stress simulated with polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG) at three levels: control (0% PEG), moderate drought stress (10 % PEG equaling to 0.18 Mpa osmotic potential) and severe drought stress (20% PEG equaling to 0.57 Mpa osmotic potential). After employing different levels of drought stress and consequently placing them in recovery for 48 h, they were exposed to chilling stress and non-chilling stress condition. For imposing chilling stress, the seedlings were transferred into growth chamber under 3°C for 6 days and 6 h per day. After receiving chilling stress treatments, the produced seedlings, were planted in the field.
Results and Discussion: In the present study, drought pretreatment reduced the effects of cold stress on fruit yield and quality. Results revealed that, the growth and yield of tomato plants were significantly increased by drought stress pretreatment in field condition. Herein, Seedlings without receiving drought pretreatment slowly grew and gained lower yield than those receiving drought. Some traits such as higher fruit size and shelf life and low number of decayed end blossom fruits were gained by drought application. The highest growth and yield rates were obtained through 10% PEG. These results indicate that drought stress at seedling stage increases the yield of tomato without harmful effects on fruit quality. The results showed that in 0% PEG treatment (control), chilling stress increased the number of days for flowering and fruiting, which indicates the growth retardation in this plant under cold stress condition. Drought pre-treatment using PEG increased the thickness of the pericarp and its post-harvest life, which may indicate the maintenance of the effects of initial stress in all stages of vegetative and reproductive growth. It has been reported that cold stress directly affects the growth potential of plants that interfere with the proper production of plants by disrupting metabolic reactions and indirectly by preventing the absorption of water by plants and oxidative stress (Hussain et al., 2018). In the present study, pre-treatment of drought reduced the destructive effects of chilling stress on fruit size. These results show that pre-treatment of drought (especially 10% PEG) had a significant effect on increasing fruit size and preventing its fruit yield reduction due to cold treatment. Similarly, Paradosi et al. (1987) reported that water stress in tomato plants increased its tolerance to cold and maintained the growth of tomato plants and its yield in cold greenhouse conditions. So far, there have been no reports of interactions between environmental stresses on fruit size, but the effects of drought stress on tomato fruit have been studied.
Conclusion: In general, the results of this experiment showed that the effects of drought pre-treatment on seedling remain in the next stages of tomato growth and can have beneficial effects on growth and yield of tomato in field conditions.

Keywords

Blossom End Rot; Chilling; Cross-tolerance; Hardening; Stress

References

1- Adams S.R., Cockshull K.E., and Cave C.R.J. 2001. Effect of temperature on the growth and development of tomato fruits. Annals of Botany 88(5): 869-877.

2- Allen D.J., and Ort D.R. 2001. Impacts of chilling temperatures on photosynthesis in warm-climate plants. Trends in Plant Science 6(1): 36-42.

3- Alvino A., d'Andria R., and Zerbi G. 1985. Fruit ripening of different tomato cultivars as influenced by irrigation regime and time of harvesting. In IV International Symposium on Water Supply and Irrigation in the Open and under Protected Cultivation 228: 137-146.

4- Avramova Z. 2015. Transcriptional memory of a stress: transient chromatin and memory (epigenetic) marks at stress‐response genes. The Plant Journal 83(1): 149-159.

5- Banon S., Ochoa J., Franco J.A., Sanchez-Blanco M.J., and Alarcon J.J. 2003. Influence of water deficit and low air humidity in the nursery on survival of Rhamnus alaternus seedlings following planting. The Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology 78(4): 518-522.

6- Bartoli C.G., Casalongue C.A., Simontacchi M., Marquez-Garcia B., and Foyer C.H. 2013. Interactions between hormone and redox signalling pathways in the control of growth and cross tolerance to stress. Environmental and Experimental Botany 94: 73-88.

7- Cayuela E., Muñoz‐Mayor A., Vicente‐Agullo F., Moyano E., Garcia‐Abellan J.O., Estañ M.T., and Bolarin M.C. 2007. Drought pretreatment increases the salinity resistance of tomato plants. Journal of plant nutrition and soil science 170(4): 479-484.

8- Dehghan H., Alizade A., Esmaili K., and Nemati S.H. 2013. Root growth, yield and yield components of tomato under drought stress. Water Research in Agriculture 29: 169- 179. (In Persian with English abstract)

9- Esmayilzade Z., and Saidi M. 2010. An evaluation of the effecs of plastic and organic mulches and different shading levels on yield and quality of tomato in term of water (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill). Iranian Journal of Horticultural Sciences 43 (4): 463-471. (In Persian with English abstract)

10- FAO, F. A. O. S. T. A. T. (2013). Food and agriculture organisation of the United Nations. Retrieved on, 11. 6. 2013.

11- Hussain H.A., Hussain S., Khaliq A., Ashraf U., Anjum S.A., Men S., and Wang L. 2018. Chilling and drought stresses in crop plants: implications, cross talk, and potential management opportunities. Frontiers in plant science 9: 393.

12- Jones J. 2007. Tomato plant culture: in the field, greenhouse, and home garden. CRC press.

13- Khairi A.N., Falah M.A.F., Suyantohadi A., Takahashi N., and Nishina H. 2015. Effect of storage temperatures on color of tomato fruit (Solanum Lycopersicum Mill.) cultivated under moderate water stress treatment. Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia 3: 178-183.

14- Korkmaz A., and Dufault R. J. 2001. Developmental consequences of cold temperature stress at transplanting on seedling and field growth and yield. I. Watermelon. Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 126(4): 404-409.

15- Krasensky J., and Jonak C. 2012. Drought, salt, and temperature stress-induced metabolic rearrangements and regulatory networks. Journal of experimental botany 63(4): 1593-1608.

16- Li X., Topbjerg H.B., Jiang D., and Liu F. 2015. Drought priming at vegetative stage improves the antioxidant capacity and photosynthesis performance of wheat exposed to a short-term low temperature stress at jointing stage. Plant and soil 393(1-2): 307-318.

17- Moneruzzaman K.M., Hossain A., Sani W., Saifuddin M., and Alenazi M. 2009. Effect of harvesting and storage conditions on the post harvest quality of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) cv. Roma VF. Australian Journal of Crop Science 3(2): 113.

18- Newton P., Sahraoui R., and Economakis C. 1999. The influence of air temperature on truss weight of tomatoes. Acta Horticulturae 43-50.

19- Noormehnad N., Noori M.R., Ghorbani B., Mohammad Khani A.R. 2007. Investigation of the impact of traditional irrigation and partial irrigation on yield and water use efecincy in tomato plants. 9th National Seminar on Irrigation and Evaporation Reduction. Kerman, Iran. (In Persian with English abstract)

20- Pardossi A., Tognoni F., and Lovemore S.S. 1987. The effect of different hardening treatments on tomato seedling growth, chilling resistance and crop production in cold greenhouse. In Symposium on Biological Aspects of Energy Saving in Protected Cultivation 229: 371-378.

21- Ramirez D.A., Rolando J.L., Yactayo W., Monneveux P., Mares V., and Quiroz R. 2015. Improving potato drought tolerance through the induction of long-term water stress memory. Plant Science 238: 26-32.

22- Razdan M.K. 2006. Genetic improvement of solanaceous crops volume 2: tomato. CRC Press.

23- Sajedinia H., Saidi M., Ghanbari F., Bagnazari M. 2018. Effects of superabsorbent polymer on yield and some characteristics of tomato under various irrigation regimes. Agricultural Science and Sustainable Production 28: 163-174. (In Persian with English abstract)

24- Sani E., Herzyk P., Perrella G., Colot V., and Amtmann A. 2013. Hyperosmotic priming of Arabidopsis seedlings establishes a long-term somatic memory accompanied by specific changes of the epigenome. Genome biology 14(6): 1-24.

25- Van Ploeg D., and Heuvelink E. 2005. Influence of sub-optimal temperature on tomato growth and yield: a review. The Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology 80(6): 652-659.

26- Walter J., Jentsch A., Beierkuhnlein C., and Kreyling J. 2013. Ecological stress memory and cross stress tolerance in plants in the face of climate extremes. Environmental and Experimental Botany 94: 3-8.

27- Walter J., Nagy L., Hein R., Rascher U., Beierkuhnlein C., Willner E., and Jentsch A. 2011. Do plants remember drought? Hints towards a drought-memory in grasses. Environmental and Experimental Botany 71(1): 34-40.

28- Wang X., Vignjevic M., Liu F., Jacobsen S., Jiang D., and Wollenweber B. 2015. Drought priming at vegetative growth stages improves tolerance to drought and heat stresses occurring during grain filling in spring wheat. Plant Growth Regulation 75(3): 677-687.

29- Yadav P.V., Kumari M., and Ahmed Z. 2011. Seed priming mediated germination improvement and tolerance to subsequent exposure to cold and salt stress in capsicum. Research Journal of Seed Science 4(3): 125-136.

30- Zomorodi Sh., Nourjo A., Emami A. 2006. Study the effects of deficit irrigation on the yield, quality and storability of tomato. Journal of Agricultural Engineering research 27: 19-30. (In Persian with English abstract)