Principal component analysis of hormone profiling data suggests an important role for cytokinins in regulating leaf growth and senescence of salinized tomato

Abstract

High throughput analytical methods allow phytohormonal profiling, but the magnitude of the data generated makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the physiological roles of different compounds. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used as a mathematical tool to evaluate relationships between physiological and hormonal variables in two experiments with salinised tomato. When tomato plants (cv Boludo F1) were grafted onto a recombinant inbred line (RIL) population derived from a Solanum lycopersicum x S. cheesmaniae cross and grown under moderate salinity (75 mM NaCl) for 100 days under greenhouse conditions, PCA revealed an important role for leaf xylem cytokinins (CKs) in controlling leaf growth and photosystem II efficiency (Fv/Fm) and thus crop productivity under salinity. PCA analysis from a similar experiment, with ungrafted tomato grown under highly saline (100 mM NaCl) conditions, that evaluated the temporal sequence of leaf growth (as relative growth rate, LRGR) and senescence and hormone concentrations, revealed a similar influence of CKs on both processes, since Fv/Fm and LRGR were strongly loaded along the two principal components and placed in the same cluster as leaf trans-zeatin and/or related to other CK-related parameters. The conservative behaviour of the eigen vectors for Fv/Fm and the analyzed phytohormones in different compartments (xylem, leaf and root) between different experiments suggests an important role for CKs in regulating leaf senescence, while CKs and other hormones seem to regulate leaf growth under salinity.

Keywords: cytokinins; leaf growth; principal component analysis; salinity; senescence; tomato.

Figure 1

Two axes of a principal components (PC1, PC2) analysis showing plant productivity trait vectors (leaf fresh weight, LFW or relative growth rate, LRGR, and Fv/Fm, indicated by arrows) and the position of various hormonal and ionic variables (denoted by abbreviations) for the long-term grafting experiment which analysed xylem variables (A), and the medium-term experiments with ungrafted plants that analyzed leaf (B) and root (C) variables. Arrows indicate eigen vectors representing the strength (given by the length of the vector) and direction of the trait correlation relative to the first two principal components (PC1, PC2). The circles enclose those variables that fall into the same cluster (95% confidence level). Abbreviations for the variables are given thus: ABA, abscisic acid; AC , 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid; IAA , indole-3-acetic acid; Z, trans-zeatin; ZR, trans-zeatin riboside.