Biostimulant and Elicitor Responses to Cricket Frass ( Acheta domesticus ) in Tomato ( Solanum lycopersicum L.) under Protected Conditions

• Published in: Plants (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 6; p. 1327
• Main Authors: Ferruzca-Campos, Ema Alejandra, Rico-Chavez, Amanda Kim, Guevara-González, Ramón Gerardo, Urrestarazu, Miguel, Cunha-Chiamolera, Tatiana Pagan Loeiro, Reynoso-Camacho, Rosalía, Guzmán-Cruz, Rosario
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 15.03.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: Acheta domesticus; Agricultural production; Agriculture; Antioxidants; biostimulation; Cultivation; elicitation; Environmental impact; Enzymatic activity; Enzymes; Farm buildings; Fruit cultivation; Greenhouses; Hormesis; insect frass; Insects; Microorganisms; Morphology; Plant growth; Plant production; Plant stress; Solanum lycopersicum; Substrates; Sustainable production; Tomatoes; Toxicity; Variance analysis; elicitation; plant growth; insect frass; biostimulation; hormesis
• ISSN: 2223-7747; 2223-7747
• DOI: 10.3390/plants12061327

Agriculture in the current century is seeking sustainable tools in order to generate plant production systems with minimal negative environmental impact. In recent years it has been shown that the use of insect frass is an option to be used for this purpose. The present work studied the effect of low doses (0.1, 0.5, and 1.0% / ) of cricket frass ( ) in the substrate during the cultivation of tomatos under greenhouse conditions. Plant performance and antioxidant enzymatic activities were measured in the study as explicative variables related to plant stress responses in order to determine possible biostimulant or elicitor effects of cricket frass treatments during tomato cultivation under greenhouse conditions. The main findings of this study indicated that tomato plants responded in a dose dependent manner to cricket frass treatments, recalling the hormesis phenomenon. On the one hand, a 0.1% ( / ) cricket frass treatment showed typical biostimulant features, while on the other hand, 0.5 and 1.0% treatments displayed elicitor effects in tomato plants under evaluated conditions in the present study. These results support the possibility that low doses of cricket frass might be used in tomato cultivation (and perhaps in other crops) for biostimulant/elicitor input into sustainable production systems.