MOLECULAR BASIS OF ANTIFUNGAL RESISTANCE IN TOMATO VARIETIES

Tomato has a significant share in human food items and its yield should necessarily be enhanced against a number of its fungal pathogens. Use of plant innate resistance against pathogens is an effective and the cheapest tool of crop protection. Furthermore, proteomic and transcriptomic analyses of plant explore the qualitative and quantitative basis of this resistance, which is helpful to design future agriculture plans. Therefore, constitutive antifungal resistance of tomato varieties commonly cultivated in Pakistan has been evaluated on the basis of their transcriptome and protein profiles. Study disclosed the fact that six pathogenesis related genes belonging to families PR1, PR2, PR3, PR7 and MT2bL exhibited higher transcriptional rate in comparison with gene Chitinase 3 acidic, which showed lower expression in resistant tomato variety. According to the semi quantitative RT-PRCR results, Osmotin-like PR5 doesn’t regulate constitutive antifungal resistance and shows equal expression with the varying resistance of plants. Moreover, resistant tomato plants had four additional protein species in their cellular contents, ranging in size 40-52 kDa. Those proteins might be resistance ensuring factors of tomato as they were absent in susceptible plant protein profile. This study demonstrates the molecular basis of tomato resistance against fungal pathogens and will be helpful for researchers to improve such resistance in tomato varieties under development.