Bioprospecting Fluorescent Plant Growth Regulators from Arabidopsis to Vegetable Crops.

The phytohormone auxin is involved in almost every process of a plant's life, from germination to plant development. Nowadays, auxin research connects synthetic chemistry, plant biology and computational chemistry in order to develop innovative and safe compounds to be used in sustainable agricultural practice. In this framework, we developed new fluorescent compounds, ethanolammonium -aminobenzoate (HEA-ABA) and -nitrobenzoate (HEA-NBA), and investigated their auxin-like behavior on two main commercial vegetables cultivated in Europe, cucumber () and tomato (), in comparison to the model plant Arabidopsis ().