New types of light-emitting diode (LED) sources were applied to irradiate Botrytis cinerea mycelium and tomato leaves that were inoculated with B. cinerea to assess the effect of different LED light wavelengths on the infection of tomato with B. cinerea, to determine the optimum light wavelengths to control B. cinerea, and to explore the mechanism of LED influence on the development of gray mold.  The results showed that purple light and blue light irradiation significantly inhibited the growth of B. cinerea mycelium, and the inhibition rates were 22.3 and 15.16%, respectively, and purple light exhibited a better inhibitory effect than blue light.  The lesion development of B. cinerea on tomato leaves was significantly inhibited upon irradiation with red and purple light with inhibition rates of 32.08 and 36.74%, respectively.  Irradiation with red light inhibited the oxidative burst of superoxide anion (O₂^-.) that was caused by infection with B. cinerea, and red light regulated the H₂O₂ content in the tomato leaf, which increased and rapidly returned to a lower level.  In addition, red light irradiation improved the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and peroxidase (POD) in tomato leaves.  However, purple light irradiation did not make tomato leaves exhibit this kind of physiological response.  Therefore, red light and purple light can suppress gray mold in tomatoes, but the disease suppression mechanisms of these two types of LED light are different.  In general, red light suppresses gray mold primarily by regulating the tomato defense mechanism for disease, whereas the suppression of tomato gray mold by purple light can be partially explained by the photo-inhibition of B. cinerea. 

Knowledge about crop growth processes in relation to N limitation is necessary to optimize N management in farming system. Plant-based diagnostic method, for instance nitrogen nutrition index (NNI) were used to determine the crop nitrogen status. This study determines the relationship of NNI with agronomic nitrogen use efficiency (AEN), tuber yield, radiation use efficiency (RUE) and leaf parameters including leaf area index (LAI), areal leaf N content (NAL) and leaf N concentration (NL). Potatoes were grown in field at three N levels: no N (N1), 150 kg N ha-1 (N2), 300 kg N ha-1 (N3). N deficiency was quantified by NNI and RUE was generally calculated by estimating of the light absorbance on leaf area. NNI was used to evaluate the N effect on tuber yield, RUE, LAI, NAL, and NL. The results showed that NNI was negatively correlated with AEN, N deficiencies (NNI<1) which occurred for N1 and N2 significantly reduced LAI, NL and tuber yield; whereas the N deficiencies had a relative small effect on NAL and RUE. To remove any effect other than N on these parameters, the actual ratio to maximum values were calculated for each developmental stage of potatoes. When the NNI ranged from 0.4 to 1, positive linear relationships were obtained between NNI and tuber yield, LAI, NL, while a nonlinear regression fitted the response of RUE to NNI.

To explore the differences of carbohydrate metabolism in two tomato species and discuss the possible regulation of 14-3-3 proteins on the sucrose phosphate synthase (SPS) activity, we determined the contents of soluble sugar and starch through high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The activities of sugar-metabolizing enzymes were assayed in desalted extract, and the relative expression levels of related genes in sugar metabolism were determined though real-time RT-PCR. The results indicated that glucose and fructose were mainly accumulated during the maturation of the fruit because of the high acid invertase (AI) and neutral invertase (NI) in Micro-Tom (Solanum lycopersicum) fruit, while in Solanum chmielewskii fruit, SPS which went along with the change of sucrose content led to the rapid sucrose increase during the fruit ripening. TFT1 and TFT10, belonging to 14-3-3 protein in tomato, were likely to down-regulated SPS activity during young and intumescence period.