It is the development of a new line of research that includes Chilean species of wild and local tomatoes as a key input in the production of rootstocks tolerant to salinity.

Dr. Juan Pablo Martínez, researcher belonging to the Research Group in Plant Physiology and Molecular Biology of the INIA, Valparaíso Region explains that "according to the results of the tests on tomato rootstocks developed with local material, they would be responding better salinity, which indicates a possibility of development of a Chilean rootstock resistant to salinity in areas with this type of stress. "

The expert added that the "introduction of rootstocks developed with local material with tolerance to salinity in tomato is important to obtain acceptable productivities and quality fruits in soils with this limitation, there are interesting tolerance mechanisms against this type of stress".

This is a FONDECYT project 1180958 that is executing in its third year with promising results. Its purpose is precisely to investigate the effect of tolerant rootstocks resulting from crosses with local material on the physiological, agronomic, pre and post-harvest parameters of fruit quality in tomato grafting plants under saline stress (NaCl).

The hypothesis of this study is that salinity-tolerant rootstocks resulting from the interspecific cross between cultivated Solanum lycopersicum and wild tomato Solanum chilense improves the growth, yield and quality attributes of tomato fruit before and after harvest in plants grafted under saline conditions (NaCl).

The detected mechanism of tolerance to the salinity of the grafted plant is that the roots of the rootstock have a higher absorption of K + in relation to the exclusion of Na +, which prevents the plant from becoming intoxicated.

This research is carried out with other groups of researchers from the Austral University of Chile and the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in which scientific exchange and national and international cooperation between them is being promoted.

The development of this research in physiology of rootstocks in tomato resistant to salinity in the context of climate change constitutes one of the studies that is part of the Research Group in Plant Physiology and Molecular Biology of Inia La Cruz, led by Dr. Juan Pablo Martínez.

These studies, said Dr. Martínez, "are a real example that in practice you can apply agronomic sciences and be in accordance with the reality of the different countries that are developing cutting-edge technology."