A Model Nutrition Control System in Potato Tissue Culture and Its Influence on Plant Elemental Composition

Low or excessive soil fertility is a major constraint to potato production. The influence of each individual nutrient element on potato plants under field studies remains ambiguous due to the influence of environmental variations. Creating an in vitro model plant with deficient or excessive nutrient content will provide a more controlled study and allow for a better understanding of how the concentration of one element can affect the uptake of other elements. Here we designed a tissue culture-based nutrition control system to systematically analyze the effects of essential nutrients on potato plants. Insufficient or excessive nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), and magnesium (Mg) contents were created by modifying the Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium. Deficient to toxic plant nutrient statuses were successfully defined by the evaluation of dry biomass and morphological symptoms. The results showed that plant shoot growth, nutrient uptake and content, and nutrient interactions were all significantly impacted by the changes in the MS media nutrient concentrations. These tissue culture systems can be successfully used for further investigations of nutrient effects on potato production in response to biotic and abiotic stresses in vitro.