Max Rubner-Institut, Department of Safety and Quality of Fruit and Vegetables, Haid-und-Neu-Straße 9, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Division Quality of Plant Products, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Goettingen, Carl-Sprengel-Weg 1, 37075, Göttingen, Germany.
Plant Physiol Biochem. 2021 Feb;159:89-99. doi: 10.1016/j.plaphy.2020.12.010. Epub 2020 Dec 13.
The macronutrient potassium (K) has vital physiological functions in plants and its availability can strongly impact quality of crops like tomato. The impact of K nutrition on conventional tomato fruit quality parameters has been described several times, but detailed investigations on the effect of K supply on the fruit metabolite profile are still rare. To fill this gap, we investigated the influence of K fertilization on the metabolite profile of tomato fruits. For this purpose, an outdoor pot experiment with three different cocktail tomato cultivars was performed. A fertilization regimen with five K levels was applied, ranging from deficiency to sufficient supply. Fruit samples were analyzed by untargeted GC×GC-MS to cover the primary metabolite profile as well as some secondary metabolites. As verified using ICP-OES, fruit K content was highly proportional to the supplied amount of K. At the metabolite profile level, the most prominent and cultivar-independent effect of increased K fertilization was the rise of tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle intermediates. Further effects were more cultivar-specific, for example an increase of the mobile nitrogen pool (e.g. amines like putrescine and amides like asparagine), changes in the profile of minor sugars (especially disaccharides) as well as higher levels of some secondary metabolites. Pronounced response patterns were mainly observed in the cultivars Primavera and Yellow Submarine that were recently characterized as higher yielding, demanding a stronger consideration of cultivar differences in future studies.
钾（K）是植物中重要的宏量营养素，其有效性会强烈影响作物（如番茄）的品质。K 营养对常规番茄果实品质参数的影响已被多次描述，但关于 K 供应对果实代谢物谱的影响的详细研究仍然很少。为了填补这一空白，我们研究了 K 施肥对番茄果实代谢物谱的影响。为此，我们进行了一项户外盆栽试验，涉及三个不同的鸡尾酒番茄品种。应用了五种 K 水平的施肥方案，从缺乏到充足供应。通过非靶向 GC×GC-MS 分析了果实样品，以覆盖主要代谢物谱以及一些次生代谢物。使用 ICP-OES 验证，果实 K 含量与供应的 K 量高度成正比。在代谢物谱水平上，增加 K 施肥最显著和不受品种影响的影响是三羧酸（TCA）循环中间产物的增加。进一步的影响更加具有品种特异性，例如移动氮库（例如腐胺和天门冬酰胺等酰胺）的增加、少量糖（特别是二糖）的谱变化以及一些次生代谢物水平的提高。在最近被描述为产量更高的 Primavera 和 Yellow Submarine 品种中主要观察到明显的响应模式，在未来的研究中需要更加考虑品种差异。
