Elicitor potential of chitosan and its derivatives to enhancing greenhouse tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) performance under deficit irrigation conditions

IF 3.9 2区农林科学 Q1 HORTICULTURE

Scientia Horticulturae Pub Date : 2025-07-01 DOI:10.1016/j.scienta.2025.114259

Leila Jafari , Mohammad Reza Shamekh , Farzin Abdollahi , Rasmieh Hamid

{"title":"Elicitor potential of chitosan and its derivatives to enhancing greenhouse tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) performance under deficit irrigation conditions","authors":"Leila Jafari , Mohammad Reza Shamekh , Farzin Abdollahi , Rasmieh Hamid","doi":"10.1016/j.scienta.2025.114259","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Elicitors such as chitosan have been investigated for their potential to alleviate the adverse effects of environmental stress on plants. A split-plot experiment was conducted using a randomized complete block design with three replications to examine the effects of chitosan and its derivatives on the performance of greenhouse tomato cv. Dafnis under deficit irrigation (DI) conditions. The experimental factors included irrigation levels (well-watered; WW as control, moderate (MD) and severe (SD) deficit irrigation) as the main factor, and foliar application of elicitors as the sub-factor, which included a control group (untreated plants), chitosan, and the chitosan derivatives N-Succinyl (NSU) and N, O-dicarboxymethylate (NOD). The study found that chitosan and its derivatives, particularly NSU, resulted in increased levels of leaf abscisic acid (ABA), reduced stomatal conductance (gs), decreased transpiration rate (TR), and consequently an increase in net photosynthesis (P<sub>n</sub>) under DI conditions compared to untreated plants, with increases of 18 %, 22.0 %, 18.9 %, 27.4 %, and 8 %, respectively. While the interaction between DI and elicitors had no significant effect on peroxidase (POD), lycopene content, or total flavonoid content (TFC), NSU increased catalase (CAT) activity by 66.9 % compared to the control under SD conditions. In SD conditions, chitosan resulted in the highest total phenolic content (TPC), while NSU was most effective under WW and MD conditions. Elicitors, especially NSU, mitigated the negative effects of SD on total and marketable fruit yield (TFY and MFY). Under SD conditions, NSU-treated plants exhibited the highest MFY (104.7 tons ha<sup>-1</sup>) and TFY (115.4 tons ha<sup>-1</sup>), representing increases of 54.2 % and 33.3 % from the control, respectively. Additionally, deficit irrigation improved water use efficiency (WUE) indices in tomato plants, by reducing water consumption. The application of elicitors further enhanced these indices by increasing leaf ABA, lowering g<sub>s</sub> and TR, increasing TFY and MFY, and decreasing unmarketable fruit yield (UFY). These results suggest that exploring chitosan derivatives for greenhouse tomatoes could enhance crop performance by improving WUE, fruit yield, and quality under deficit irrigation conditions. Based on these findings, NSU is proposed as a biological elicitor to mitigate the negative effects of water scarcity on tomatoes. However, further research is needed to assess its effectiveness in other crop plants.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":21679,"journal":{"name":"Scientia Horticulturae","volume":"349 ","pages":"Article 114259"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Scientia Horticulturae","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423825003085","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HORTICULTURE","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Elicitors such as chitosan have been investigated for their potential to alleviate the adverse effects of environmental stress on plants. A split-plot experiment was conducted using a randomized complete block design with three replications to examine the effects of chitosan and its derivatives on the performance of greenhouse tomato cv. Dafnis under deficit irrigation (DI) conditions. The experimental factors included irrigation levels (well-watered; WW as control, moderate (MD) and severe (SD) deficit irrigation) as the main factor, and foliar application of elicitors as the sub-factor, which included a control group (untreated plants), chitosan, and the chitosan derivatives N-Succinyl (NSU) and N, O-dicarboxymethylate (NOD). The study found that chitosan and its derivatives, particularly NSU, resulted in increased levels of leaf abscisic acid (ABA), reduced stomatal conductance (gs), decreased transpiration rate (TR), and consequently an increase in net photosynthesis (P_n) under DI conditions compared to untreated plants, with increases of 18 %, 22.0 %, 18.9 %, 27.4 %, and 8 %, respectively. While the interaction between DI and elicitors had no significant effect on peroxidase (POD), lycopene content, or total flavonoid content (TFC), NSU increased catalase (CAT) activity by 66.9 % compared to the control under SD conditions. In SD conditions, chitosan resulted in the highest total phenolic content (TPC), while NSU was most effective under WW and MD conditions. Elicitors, especially NSU, mitigated the negative effects of SD on total and marketable fruit yield (TFY and MFY). Under SD conditions, NSU-treated plants exhibited the highest MFY (104.7 tons ha^-1) and TFY (115.4 tons ha^-1), representing increases of 54.2 % and 33.3 % from the control, respectively. Additionally, deficit irrigation improved water use efficiency (WUE) indices in tomato plants, by reducing water consumption. The application of elicitors further enhanced these indices by increasing leaf ABA, lowering g_s and TR, increasing TFY and MFY, and decreasing unmarketable fruit yield (UFY). These results suggest that exploring chitosan derivatives for greenhouse tomatoes could enhance crop performance by improving WUE, fruit yield, and quality under deficit irrigation conditions. Based on these findings, NSU is proposed as a biological elicitor to mitigate the negative effects of water scarcity on tomatoes. However, further research is needed to assess its effectiveness in other crop plants.

查看原文本刊更多论文

壳聚糖及其衍生物在亏缺灌溉条件下提高温室番茄生产性能的激发潜力

壳聚糖等激发子已被研究用于缓解环境胁迫对植物的不利影响。采用3个重复的随机完全区组设计，研究壳聚糖及其衍生物对温室番茄生产性能的影响。亏缺灌溉（DI）条件下的Dafnis。试验因素包括灌溉水平(水分充足；WW为对照，中度（MD）和重度（SD）亏缺灌溉为主因子，叶面诱导子施用为次因子，其中包括对照组（未经处理的植株）、壳聚糖及其衍生物N-琥珀酰（NSU）和N， o -二羧基甲基化（NOD）。研究发现，壳聚糖及其衍生物，特别是NSU，使叶片脱落酸（ABA）水平增加，气孔导度（gs）降低，蒸腾速率（TR）降低，从而使净光合作用（Pn）增加，与未处理的植物相比，分别增加18%，22.0%,18.9%，27.4%和8%。DI和激发子互作对过氧化物酶（POD）、番茄红素含量和总黄酮含量（TFC）没有显著影响，而NSU使过氧化氢酶（CAT）活性比SD条件下的对照提高了66.9%。在SD条件下，壳聚糖的总酚含量最高，而在WW和MD条件下，NSU的总酚含量最高。激发子，尤其是NSU，减轻了SD对总果产量和市售果产量（TFY和MFY）的负面影响。在SD条件下，nsu处理的植株MFY （104.7 t ha-1）和TFY （115.4 t ha-1）最高，分别比对照增加了54.2%和33.3%。亏缺灌溉通过降低番茄耗水量，提高了番茄植株水分利用效率指数。诱导子的应用通过增加叶片ABA、降低gs和TR、增加TFY和MFY以及降低滞销果产量（UFY）进一步增强了这些指标。综上所述，在亏缺灌溉条件下，探索壳聚糖衍生物可以通过提高水分利用效率、果实产量和品质来提高温室番茄的生产性能。基于这些发现，NSU被建议作为一种生物激发剂来减轻水资源短缺对番茄的负面影响。然而，还需要进一步的研究来评估其在其他作物中的有效性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Scientia Horticulturae 农林科学-园艺

CiteScore

8.60

自引率

4.70%

发文量

796

审稿时长

47 days

期刊介绍： Scientia Horticulturae is an international journal publishing research related to horticultural crops. Articles in the journal deal with open or protected production of vegetables, fruits, edible fungi and ornamentals under temperate, subtropical and tropical conditions. Papers in related areas (biochemistry, micropropagation, soil science, plant breeding, plant physiology, phytopathology, etc.) are considered, if they contain information of direct significance to horticulture. Papers on the technical aspects of horticulture (engineering, crop processing, storage, transport etc.) are accepted for publication only if they relate directly to the living product. In the case of plantation crops, those yielding a product that may be used fresh (e.g. tropical vegetables, citrus, bananas, and other fruits) will be considered, while those papers describing the processing of the product (e.g. rubber, tobacco, and quinine) will not. The scope of the journal includes all horticultural crops but does not include speciality crops such as, medicinal crops or forestry crops, such as bamboo. Basic molecular studies without any direct application in horticulture will not be considered for this journal.