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Journal of Experimental Botany 2007 58(13):3567-3580; doi:10.1093/jxb/erm202
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© 2007 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

Model-assisted analysis of tomato fruit growth in relation to carbon and water fluxes

Huai-Feng Liu1,2, Michel Génard1, Soraya Guichard1 and Nadia Bertin1,*

1INRA, UR1115 Plantes et systèmes de culture horticoles, F-84000 Avignon, France
2Agricultural College, Shi He Zi University, Shi He Zi, Xin Jiang, PR China, 832003

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bertin{at}avignon.inra.fr

This work proposed a model of tomato growth adapted from the Fishman and Génard model developed to predict carbon and water accumulation in peach fruit. The main adaptations relied on the literature on tomato and mainly concerned: (i) the decrease in cell wall extensibility coefficient during fruit development; (ii) the increase in the membrane reflection coefficient to solute from 0 to 1, which accounted for the switch from symplasmic to apoplasmic phloem unloading, and (iii) the negative influence of the initial fruit weight on the maximum rate of active carbon uptake based on the assumption of higher competition for carbon among cells in large fruits containing more cells. A sensitivity analysis was performed and the model was calibrated and evaluated with satisfaction on 17 experimental datasets obtained under contrasting environmental (temperature, air vapour pressure deficit) and plant (plant fruit load and fruit position) conditions. Then the model was used to analyse the variations in the main fluxes involved in tomato fruit growth and accumulation of carbon in response to virtual carbon and water stresses. The conclusions are that this model, integrating simple biophysical laws, was able to simulate the complex fruit behaviour in response to external or internal factors and thus it may be a powerful tool for managing fruit growth and quality.

Key words: Carbon flux, cell expansion, fruit growth, humidity, Lycopersicon esculentum, model, Solanum lycopersicum, temperature, tomato, water flux

Received 8 June 2007; Revised 24 July 2007 Accepted 3 August 2007


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