THE FASTER, THE BETTER: AERIAL ROOTS (AER) TOMATO MUTANT ABILITY TO PROMPTLY FORM ADVENTITIOUS ROOTS RESULTS IN FASTER ADAPTATION TO FLOODING

MARÍA LAURA VIDOZ; FRANCESCO MIGNOLLI; HEBER TOMÁS AISPURU; LUIS AMADO MROGINSKI

Mar del Plata

Congreso; XV Congreso Latinoamericano XXX Reunión Argentina de Fisiología Vegetal; 2014

Flooding is a frequent stress that causes oxygen deficiency and poor respiration in submerged tissues. Plants living in flood-prone areas have developed morphological and physiological adaptations that allow them to sustain growth. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plants thrive in well drained soils but exhibit a number of adaptive responses to flooding. Considering that soil waterlogging frequently results in death of the original root system, plants that readily produce a new adventitious root system could have better chances of surviving in a hypoxic environment. Therefore, we compared a wild type tomato cultivar (Ailsa Craig, AC) and the aerial roots (aer) monogenic mutant, characterized by the abundant production of adventitious root primordia along the stem. In aer, preformed root primordia start to elongate within few hours from the onset of flooding and the adventitious root/shoot ratio in plants flooded for 3 weeks is comparable to the root/shoot ratio in control plants, suggesting that a new root system replaces the original root system. The biomass of aer control and flooded plants is similar after 3 weeks of flooding. On the contrary, flooded AC plants, which take longer to form adventitious roots, do not reach the level of control plants for the tested parameters.