Interactive Effects of Grafting and Manganese Supply on Growth, Yield, and Nutrient Uptake by Tomato

By Dimitrios Savvas, D. Papastavrou, G. Ntatsi, A. Ropokis, C. Olympios, Hagen Hartmann, D. Schwarz. 2009

98 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L. cv. Belladona F 1 ) plants were either self-grafted or grafted onto the rootstock 'He-Man' and grown in recirculating nutrient solution with low, standard, or high manganese (Mn) concentrations (2, 15, and 100 μM, respectively). The concentrations of all nutrients except Mn were identical in all treatments. The objectives of the experiment were to test whether grafted tomato plants have a higher or lower ability to withstand deficient or toxic levels of Mn in the root zone and to study the effects of grafting on nutrient uptake and translocation to the aerial organs. Both excessive and insufficient Mn concentrations in the root zone significantly reduced the number of fruit per plant, whereas mean fruit weight was unaffected by external Mn concentrations ranging from ≈1 to 100 μM. The excessive external Mn concentration caused the leaf Mn concentration to increase beyond the critically high level at the expense of leaf and root iron and zinc concentrations but without significant differences between the grafting treatments. The fruit yield of plants grafted onto 'He-Man' was significantly lower than that of self-grafted plants when the Mn concentration in the root zone was excessively high. This response might be associated with the lower translocation of magnesium (Mg) to the leaves of plants grafted onto 'He-Man' in comparison with the self-grafted plants, resulting in lower Mg/Mn ratios in the leaves. Grafting onto 'He-Man' also restricted the leaf and root iron and copper concentrations but enhanced those of potassium. Overall, tomato cv. Belladona proved to be more tolerant to excess Mn than to Mn deficiency in terms of vegetative growth and fruit yield.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c143b2002e8f48e5bf66b41c77c5dc73b606e432

Citations in the corpus

• An overview of grafting re-establishment in woody fruit species (2019, unknown): “Caballero et al., 2013 Tomasi et al. (2015) Furthermore, some studies ( ; ) Savvas et al., 2009 Nawaz et al., 2016 indicate that grafting may limit the absorption and toxicity of heavy metals, thereby increasing the uptake e ciency of essential mineral ffi elements ( ); however, it is not possible to…”