Std4800

The number of fully ripe fruits as well as the fresh weight of marketable fruit of the first two trusses were recorded on all plants. At the end of the experiment (July 5, 65 DAT), plants were separated into leaves, stems and roots. All plant tissues were dried at 80°C for 72 h until they reached a constant weight which corresponded to their dry biomasses. Shoot dry weight was equal to the sum of the aerial vegetative parts (leaves + stems), and the root-to-shoot ratio was also calculated. Dried plant tissues were sampled for ion analyses. The total leaf area per plant was measured using an electronic area meter (Li-Cor3000, Li-Cor, Lincoln, NE, USA).
The plant height as well as the number of leaves per plant were counted. Also, the root system architecture components were determined. Root system collection and sample preparation were performed following the protocol described previously by Lucini et al. (2015 (link)) and Rouphael et al. (2017a (link)). The determination of root morphology characteristics was performed using WinRHIZO Pro (Regent Instruments Inc., Canada), connected to an image analysis scanner (STD 4800 Regent Instruments Inc., Canada). Three-dimensional images were captured and the following root characteristics were determined: root diameter, total root length and surface.

The roots were removed from the seedlings and rinsed with distilled water. The root architecture was photographed using a root scanner (STD 4800, Canada), and the root morphology indexes (including total root length, root volume, root surface area, and number of root tips) were analyzed using Win RHIZO 5.0 (Regent Instruments, Inc., Canada).

Leaf area was measured by a leaf area scanner (YMJ-C, Zhejiang Topp Co., LTD., Taizhou, China) on whole single plants. Plant height was obtained by a Vernier caliper using the straight-line distance from the stem base to the apex of the shoot apical meristem. After removing the aboveground part of the seedlings, the image of the roots was scanned by a root scanner (STD4800, Quebec, QC, Canada), and then the total root length of each plant was obtained by the root analysis software WinRHIZO 5.0 (Regent Instruments, Inc., Quebec, QC, Canada). The mean values of plant height, leaf area, and total root length were measured for five tomato seedlings in each replication.