Effect of Methyl jasmonate (MeJA) on Biochemical Constituents of Seed Treated Tomato

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) plant is often attacked by numerous insect pests which lead to severe crop loss. To reduce the crop loss naturally, plants have evolved with variety of defensive hormone namely jasmonic acid (JA) which protect the plants from the insect pests. Astudy was carried out at Kittur Rani Channamma College of Horticulture, Arabhavi in 2023-24 to investigate the effect of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) on biochemical constituents such as phenol and tannin content in leaves of seed treated tomato. The experiment followed a Completely randomized design included nine treatments and three replications [T₁ - MeJA at 0.5 mM, T₂ - MeJA at 0.75 mM, T₃ - MeJA at 1 mM, T₄ - MeJA at 2 mM, T₅ - MeJA at 2.5 mM, T₆ - MeJA at 3 mM, T₇ - Ethyl alcohol, T₈ - UHSB - POPand T₉ - Untreated control (Water)]. The results revealed that among treatments seeds treated with MeJA at 3 mM recorded highest phenol and tannin content as 4.86 and 2.85 mg/g, respectively which was statistically similar to MeJA at 2.5 mM concentration (4.76 and 2.78 mg/g, respectively) and lowest phenol and tannin content (2.72 and 0.91 mg/g, respectively) was recorded in ethyl alcohol treatment. However, These results highlighted tomato seeds treated with methyl jasmonate has positive effect in increasing phenol and tannin content in leaves and potentially helps in inducing resistance in plants.