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The active compound in Rheum officinale Baill, aloe-emodin promotes tomato seedling growth

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Abstract

Long-term excessive use of chemical fertilizers led to serious environmental pollution and food safety problems. Natural biostimulants are complimentary to pesticides and fertilizers, which can regulate plant growth and metabolism via promoting nutrient absorption and improving the ability to resist abiotic stresses. Vegetal extract, rich in bioactive substances, is one type of biostimulants. We determined the concentration of predominant active compound aloe-emodin in Rheum officinale Baill (R. officinale) extracts using LC–MS/MS. We applied either R. officinale extracts or aloe-emodin to tomato seedlings at the vegetative stage via different ways including spraying foliar (S), root irrigation (R) or spraying foliar and root irrigation (SR). Both R. officinale crude extracts and aloe-emodin could promote the growth of tomato stem and root, improve the photosynthetic capacity of leaves, improve the biomass of tomato, and ultimately lead to the vigorous growth of tomato plants. Clustering analysis and correlation analysis further confirmed that the effect was best in R application mode. Extracts of R. officinale and its active component aloe-emodin have been shown to increase the growth of tomato seedlings, implying that R. officinale could be a source of biostimulants.

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Acknowledgements

We thank plant growth facility members in the state key laboratory of crop biology at Shandong Agricultural University.

Funding

This work was supported by Key research and development program of Shandong Province (2021LZGC017), Taishan Scholar Foundation of Shandong Province (tsqn201812034), Agricultural Seed Project of Shandong Province (2020LZGC005) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (31872951).

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Author notes

  1. Chenyu Xu, Mingxuan Ma and Jinyang Xin have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Crop Biology, College of Horticulture Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai-An, 271018, Shandong, China

    Chenyu Xu, Mingxuan Ma, Jinyang Xin, Fangfang Ma, Genzhong Liu & Zhilong Bao

  2. Laboratory of Natural Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, China

    Jia Li

  3. Valagro (Shanghai) Trading Company, Minhang, Shanghai, 200119, China

    Dong Fang

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  1. Chenyu Xu
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Contributions

ZB, GL and FM conceived and designed the experiments. CX, MM, GL and JX performed most of experiments. GL, JX and CX analyzed the data. JL provided technical support. DF provided materials and resources. GL, FM and ZB wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Genzhong Liu or Zhilong Bao.

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Communicated by Pramod Kumar Nagar.

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Xu, C., Ma, M., Xin, J. et al. The active compound in Rheum officinale Baill, aloe-emodin promotes tomato seedling growth. Plant Growth Regul 102, 213–226 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-023-00995-1

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