Abstract
Tomato has a significant share in human food items and its yield should necessarily be enhanced against a number of its
fungal pathogens. Use of plant innate resistance against pathogens is an effective and the cheapest tool of crop protection.
Furthermore, proteomic and transcriptomic analyses of plant explore the qualitative and quantitative basis of this resistance,
which is helpful to design future agriculture plans. Therefore, constitutive antifungal resistance of tomato varieties commonly
cultivated in Pakistan has been evaluated on the basis of their transcriptome and protein profiles. Study disclosed the fact that
six pathogenesis related genes belonging to families PR1, PR2, PR3, PR7 and MT2bL exhibited higher transcriptional rate in
comparison with gene Chitinase 3 acidic, which showed lower expression in resistant tomato variety. According to the semi
quantitative RT-PRCR results, Osmotin-like PR5 doesn’t regulate constitutive antifungal resistance and shows equal
expression with the varying resistance of plants. Moreover, resistant tomato plants had four additional protein species in their
cellular contents, ranging in size 40-52 kDa. Those proteins might be resistance ensuring factors of tomato as they were
absent in susceptible plant protein profile. This study demonstrates the molecular basis of tomato resistance against fungal
pathogens and will be helpful for researchers to improve such resistance in tomato varieties under development.
