Promotive Effects of Alginate-Derived Oligosaccharides on the Inducing Drought Resistance of Tomato

In order to determine the role of alginate-derived oligosaccharides (ADO) in drought stress resistance of tomato (Ly-copersicon esculentum Miller) seedlings, the leaves were exposed to different concentrations of ADO (0.05%, 0.10%, 0.20%, 0.30% and 0.50%) after drought stress was simulated by exposing the roots to 0.6 molL-1 PEG-6000 solution for 6 h. Changes in biomass, electrolyte leakage and malondialdehyde (MDA), free proline, total soluble sugars (TSS) and abscisic acid (ABA), the enzyme activities of catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD) and phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) were measured to investigate the effects of ADO treatment. The results showed that the treatment with an ADO concentration of 0.20% exhibited the highest performance of drought stress resistance in the tomato seedlings by decreasing the electrolyte leakage and the concentration of MDA, increasing the contents of free proline, TSS and ABA, and increasing the activities of CAT, SOD, POD and PAL after treatment with ADO. It is suggested that changes in electrolyte leakage, MDA, osmotic solutes, ABA, anti-oxidative enzyme and PAL activities were responsible for the increased drought stress resistance in tomato seedlings. To our best knowledge, this is the first report of the effect of ADO treatment on enhancing the drought stress resistance of tomato seedlings.