Ionomic, metabolic and hormonal characterization of the phenological phases of different tomato genotypes using omics tools

Abstract Biostimulants have become highly important in agriculture. For these products to be efficient, they need to be formulated, for a specific crop, according to the mineral nutrients and metabolites requirements in each phenological phase of the crops. In this study, the agronomical behavior of 10 tomato varieties was evaluated (‘Cherry’, ‘Corazon de Buey’, ‘Green Zebra’, ‘Marglobe’, ‘Marmande VR’, ‘Montserrat’, ‘Muchamiel’, ‘Optima’, ‘Roma VF’ and ‘Tres Cantos’), in other to select four varieties with the greatest agronomical differences between them to be analyzed by omics tools. So, the varieties ‘Cherry’, ‘Green Zebra’, ‘Montserrat’, and ‘Tres Cantos’ were selected for an ionomic, metabolic, and hormone study to determine the predominant nutrients and metabolites in the different phenological phases, and to relate it with its agronomic characteristics. It was observed that the variability of the results could be mainly explained by the different phenological phases during the development of the crop, rather than by the variety. The major compounds were N (4.71 g 100 g−1 dw), K (3.86 g 100 g−1 dw), P (0.53 mg g−1 dw), glutamate (5.21 mg g−1 dw), glutamine (2.89 mg g−1 dw), aspartate (1.54 mg g−1 dw), tyrosine (2.36 mg g−1 dw), phenylalanine (1.70 mg g−1 dw), sucrose (14.4 mg g−1 dw), malate (13.2 mg g−1 dw), and isopentenyladenine (iP) (2.65 ng g−1 dw). No correlation was found between any specific compound and an agronomic characteristic. But, it can be concluded that Biostimulant products must contain these compounds in other to stimulate growth and increase the production of tomatoes plants, as they comprise most of the metabolites and nutrients needed in some or all of the phenological phases.