Grafting improves tomato yield under low nitrogen conditions by enhancing nitrogen metabolism in plants

To alleviate the effects of increasingly severe environmental conditions and meet the increasing demand for organic agricultural products, this paper studied tomato grafting under low nitrogen conditions in an effort to enhance yield and improve fruit quality by enhancing nitrogen metabolism. In this study, we screened for two tomato genotypes, a high nitrogen use efficiency genotype ('TMS-150') and a low nitrogen use efficiency genotype ('0301111'), using rootstocks from 25 tomato genotypes and studied the effects of tomato grafting on plant yield, fruit quality, nitrogen content, activities of key nitrogen metabolism enzymes, and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) under different nitrogen fertilizer conditions. The results showed that the yield of the tomato plants, the activities of key enzymes during nitrogen metabolism, the contents of different forms of nitrogen, and the efficiency of nitrogen use were lower at low nitrogen fertilization levels and higher at higher nitrogen fertilization levels, while the measured indicators were the highest under the N40 nitrogen fertilizer treatment. Grafting tomatoes with high-NUE tomato seedlings as the rootstock resulted in significant increases in the nitrogen content and the activity of key enzymes, enhanced the NUE of tomato plants, increased tomato yield, and improved fruit quality compared to those of the seedlings grafted with low-NUE rootstock. Our results indicate that tomato plants grafted with high-NUE rootstock presented enhanced absorption and utilization of nitrogen and increased plant yield by promoting nitrogen metabolism at different nitrogen levels.