Protein hydrolysates enhance recovery from drought stress in tomato plants: phenomic and metabolomic insights.

High-throughput phenotyping technologies together with metabolomics analysis can speed up the development of highly efficient and effective biostimulants for enhancing crop tolerance to drought stress. The aim of this study was to examine the morphophysiological and metabolic changes in tomato plants foliarly treated with two protein hydrolysates obtained by enzymatic hydrolysis of vegetal proteins from Malvaceae (PH1) or Fabaceae (PH2) in comparison with a control treatment, as well as to investigate the mechanisms involved in the enhancement of plant resistance to repeated drought stress cycles. A phenotyping device was used for daily monitoring morphophysiological traits while untargeted metabolomics analysis was carried out in leaves of the best performing treatment based on phenotypic results. The above findings demonstrated the advantages of a combined phenomics-metabolomics approach for elucidating the relationship between metabolic and morphophysiological changes associated with a biostimulant-mediated increase of crop resistance to repeated water stress events.

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Copyright © 2024 Leporino, Rouphael, Bonini, Colla and Cardarelli.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

PB is Founder & CEO at oloBion SL and Member of Arcadia s.r.l. while GC is Founder & Member of Arcadia s.r.l. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.