Timing of flowering is a reproductive trait that has significant impact on fitness in plants. In contrast to recent advances in understanding the molecular basis of floral transition, few empirical studies have addressed questions concerning population processes of flowering time diversification within species. We analyzed chloroplast DNA genealogical structure of flowering time variation in ce...

My research on mango flowering began about five years ago. By that time, smudging, the traditional Philippine use of smoke to promote flowering, had given way to the more convenient and efficacious use of ethephon (a compound that generates ethylene in plants) and potassium nitrate sprays. Not only were mango trees in the Philippines stimulated to flower out of season with these treatments, but...

BACKGROUND The effect of herbivory on plant fitness varies widely. Understanding the causes of this variation is of considerable interest because of its implications for plant population dynamics and trait evolution. We experimentally defoliated the annual herb Arabidopsis thaliana in a natural population in Sweden to test the hypotheses that (a) plant fitness decreases with increasing damage, ...

Flowering time is a critical trait for crops cultivated under various temperature/photoperiod conditions around the world. To understand better the flowering time of rice, we used the vector pTCK303 to produce several lines of RNAi knockdown transgenic rice and investigated their flowering times and other agronomic traits. Among them, the heading date of FRRP1-RNAi knockdown transgenic rice was...

Species often harbour large amounts of phenotypic variation in ecologically important traits, and some of this variation is genetically based. Understanding how this genetic variation is spatially structured can help to understand species' ecological tolerances and range limits. We modelled the climate envelopes of Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes, ranging from early- to late-flowering, as a func...

Plants adjust the timing of the transition to flowering to ensure their reproductive success in changing environments. Temperature and light are major environmental signals that affect flowering time through converging on the transcriptional regulation of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) encoding the florigen in Arabidopsis. Here, we show that a MYB transcription factor EARLY FLOWERING MYB PROTEIN (EFM) ...

Flowering of Arabidopsis is induced by long summer days (LDs). The transcriptional regulator CONSTANS (CO) promotes flowering, and its transcription is increased under LDs. We systematically misexpressed transcription factors in companion cells and identified several DOF proteins that delay flowering by repressing CO transcription. Combining mutations in four of these, including CYCLING DOF FAC...

What is the flowering transition? It marks the end of vegetative growth and the beginning of reproductive development in flowering plants. The physiological changes that cause it are referred to as floral induction. What is SAM? The shoot apical meristem — a group of undifferentiated progenitor cells that occupies the tip of the stem. It gives rise to both vegetative organs (leaves) and reprodu...

Winter-annual accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana are often characterized by a requirement for exposure to the cold of winter to initiate flowering in the spring. The block to flowering prior to cold exposure is due to high levels of the flowering repressor FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC). Exposure to cold promotes flowering through a process known as vernalization that epigenetically represses FLC expr...

Flowering is one of the most influential events in the life history of a plant and one of the main determinants of reproductive investment and lifetime fitness. It is also a highly complex trait controlled by dozens of genes. Understanding the selective pressures influencing time to flowering, and being able to reliably predict how it will evolve in novel environments, are unsolved challenges f...