<em>Trichoderma asperellum</em> Enhances Low-Temperature Tolerance of Tomato Plants by Regulating Oxidative Stress, Osmolytes Accumulation and Stomatal Traits

Low temperature is one of the major environmental challenges for most crops, especially from tropical and semitropical origin. The present work aimed to study low temperatures tolerance in tomato plants when previously these were inoculated with Trichoderma asperellum. Here, it was demonstrated that tomato plants inoculated with fungal isolate exhibited an alleviation of the injuries caused by low temperatures. The increasement of chilling tolerance was accompanied by a strong reduction in oxidative stress, but also by an enhancement of proline and soluble sugar accumulation. Additionally, leaf stomata features were also measured, and found that both bioinoculant and low temperatures increased leaf stomatal densities indexes but decreased the stomatal area, suggesting leaf traits may also contribute to alleviating the damage caused by the low temperatures in tomato plants. The results of the present study demonstrate that T. asperellum provokes physiological and biochemical changes in tomato plants that together enhance tolerance to low temperature, proposing the use of T. asperellum as an agroecological strategy confronting crop damage to low temperatures.