Salt tolerance in the wild relatives of the cultivated tomato: responses of Solanum pennellii to high salinity

Summary

The cultivated tomato Lycopersicon esculentum, cultivar Rheinlands Ruhm, and the wild species Solanum pennellii accession Atico, were compared with respect to their salt tolerance. The wild species was found to be more salt tolerant than the cultivated tomato. In contrast to L. esculentum plants, the growth of the wild species was not impaired by the high salinity (Table 1), although the latter accumulated more Cl⁻ and Na⁺ ions and its K⁺ level decreased under salinity (Tables 3, 4, 5). The smaller increase in water deficit under salinity in the wild species, probably resulted from its higher accumulation of ions (Table 2).