Integrated model simulates bigger, sweeter tomatoes under changing climate under reduced nitrogen and water input

Abstract

When simulating the response of fruit growth and quality to environmental factors and cultivation practices, the interactions between the mother plant and fruit need to be considered as a whole system. Here, we developed the integrative Tomato plant and fruit Growth and Fruit Sugar metabolism (TGFS) model by coupling equations describing the biophysical processes of leaf gas exchange, water transport, carbon allocation, organ growth and fruit sugar metabolism. The model also accounts for effects of soil nitrogen and atmospheric CO₂ concentration on gaseous exchange of water and carbon by the leaf. With different nitrogen and water input values, TGFS performed well at simulating the dry mass of the tomato leaf, stem, root, and fruit, and the concentrations of soluble sugar and starch in fruit. TGFS simulations showed that increasing air temperature and CO₂ concentration has positive effects on fruit growth, but not on sugar concentrations. Further model-based analyses of cultivation scenarios suggest that, in the context of climate change, decreasing N by 15%–25% and decreasing irrigation by 10%–20% relative to current levels would increase tomato fresh weight by 27.8%– 36.4% while increasing soluble sugar concentration by up to 10%. TGFS provides a promising tool to optimise N and water inputs for sustainable high-quality tomatoes.

Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFD1900503, 2021YFD1900802), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021 M703518), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51790534). We thank Prof. Xiaoling Su for providing the meteorological data of the Wuwei area under the future climate change.

Author contributions

The study was designed by H.Z., S.K., G.V., M.G. and J.C.; H.Z., G.V., M.G., and J.C. contributed to the development of the integrative model; H.Z., G.V., and J.C. constructed the model and wrote the simulation code. H.Z. undertook the model testing and refinement. H.Z., S.K., M.G., and J.C. contributed to analysing the simulation results; H.Z. wrote the draft and all authors contributed to revising the paper.

Data availability

The data that supports the findings were available in the paper and the Supplementary Materials published online.

Conflicts of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests for this research.

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