Plant Gene and Trait 2025, Vol.16, No.4, 142-151 http://genbreedpublisher.com/index.php/pgt 142 Review Article Open Access Contribution of Dwarfing Rootstocks to the Establishment of Stable and High-Yielding Tomato Cultivation Systems Wenzhong Huang 1, Xingzhu Feng 2, Dandan Huang 2 1 Hainan Provincial Key Laboratory of Crop Molecular Breeding, Sanya, 572025, Hainan, China 2 Hainan Institute of Biotechnology, Haikou, 570206, Hainan, China Corresponding email: dandan.huang@hibio.org Plant Gene and Trait, 2025, Vol.16, No.4 doi: 10.5376/pgt.2025.16.0016 Received: 08 Jun., 2025 Accepted: 12 Jul., 2025 Published: 21 Jul., 2025 Copyright © 2025 Huang et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Preferred citation for this article: Huang W.Z., Feng X.Z., and Huang D.D., 2025, Contribution of dwarfing rootstocks to the establishment of stable and high-yielding tomato cultivation systems, Plant Gene and Trait, 16(4): 142-151 (doi: 10.5376/pgt.2025.16.0016) Abstract This study mainly introduces the role of dwarfing rootstocks in tomato cultivation. They can help regulate the growth intensity of plants, enhance their stress resistance, and make the utilization of water and nutrients more efficient. It also explores the impact of dwarfing rootstocks on yield stability, fruit quality and management efficiency under different planting environments, and analyzes the commonly used dwarfing rootstocks in the current market. Their genetic origins, hormone regulation methods, and how they interact with scions were evaluated. The performance of dwarfing rootstocks in the face of difficult environments such as drought, salinity and alkalinity, and high temperature was examined through actual cases to see if they could maintain yield and quality under these conditions. This study aims to provide some theoretical support and technical references for the establishment of an efficient, stable and climate-adaptive tomato cultivation system in the future. Keywords Dwarfing rootstocks; Tomatoes; Stress resistance; High-density cultivation; Yield and quality 1 Introduction During the process of growing tomatoes, many problems are often encountered, such as drought, high temperature, salinity and alkalinity, as well as pests and diseases. These problems will lead to a decline in output, a deterioration in fruit quality, and farmers will also suffer economic losses as a result (Alqardaeai et al., 2025). Nowadays, the weather is becoming increasingly extreme, water resources are tight, and the duration of high temperatures is getting longer, which also makes tomato cultivation more difficult (Khapte et al., 2022; Davis et al., 2024; Hashem et al., 2024). In addition, growing tomatoes on the same plot of land for consecutive years can also lead to “continuous cropping obstacles”. Coupled with diseases, it also affects the stable yield of tomatoes (Lee et al., 2020; Latifah et al., 2023). To address these issues, people began to employ grafting techniques, especially dwarfing rootstocks. This method can control the plant from growing too vigorously, making it suitable for a denser planting style. It can also enhance the stress resistance of the plant and help it absorb water and nutrients better (Aydin, 2024). If tomatoes are grafted onto rootstocks with different genetic backgrounds, they can be more drought-resistant, salt-tolerant, heat-resistant, disease-resistant, and at the same time, the yield and quality will not be poor, and may even be better (Hashem et al., 2024). In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to the molecular mechanisms of dwarfing rootstocks, hormonal regulation patterns, and how they affect fruit quality and stress resistance (Hayat et al., 2021; Gomes et al., 2022; Ormazabal et al., 2024). This study aims to explore the extent to which dwarfing rootstocks can enhance tomato yield, quality and stress resistance, analyze their ability to adjust plant structure, evaluate their application effects under different environmental conditions, and also make some discussions on future development directions. This study hopes to provide some theoretical and technical references for establishing an efficient and stable-yielding tomato cultivation method.
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