Latitudinal variation in climate is predicted to select for latitudinal differentiation in sensitivity to the environmental cues that signal plants to flower at the appropriate time for a given climate. In Arabidopsis thaliana, flowering is promoted by exposure to cold temperatures (vernalization), and several vernalization pathway loci are known. To test whether natural variation in vernalizat...

Rice is a facultative short-day plant, and molecular genetic studies have identified the major genes involved in short-day flowering. However, the molecular mechanisms promoting the diversity of flowering time in cultivated rice are not known. We used a core collection of 64 rice cultivars that represent the genetic diversity of 332 accessions from around the world and studied the expression le...

Flowering plants produce a meristem at the shoot tip where specialized tissue generates shoot apical meristems at the appropriate time to differentiate into reproductive structures, pollinate and efficiently generate seeds. The complex set of molecular and phenological events culminating in development of a flowering meristem is referred to as 'flowering time'. Flowering time affects plant prod...

The degree to which genomic architecture varies across space and time is central to the evolution of genomes in response to natural selection. Bulked-segregant mapping combined with pooled sequencing provides an efficient means to estimate the effect of genetic variants on quantitative traits. We develop a novel likelihood framework to identify segregating variation within multiple populations ...

Limited water availability is one of the most prominent abiotic constraints to plant survival and reproduction. Thus, plants have evolved different strategies to cope with water deficit, including modification of their growth and timing of developmental events such as flowering. In this work, we explore the link between flowering time and growth responses to moderate drought stress in Arabidops...

Oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) is a major oil crop which is grown worldwide. Adaptation to different environments and regional climatic conditions involves variation in the regulation of flowering time. Winter types have a strong vernalization requirement whereas semi-winter and spring types have a low vernalization requirement or flower without exposure to cold, respectively. In Arabidopsis ...

The major maturity gene E1 has the most prominent effect on flowering time and photoperiod sensitivity of soybean, but the pathway mediated by E1 is largely unknown. Here, we found the expression of GmFT4, a homolog of Flowering Locus T, was strongly up-regulated in transgenic soybean overexpressing E1, whereas expression of flowering activators, GmFT2a and GmFT5a, was suppressed. GmFT4 express...

FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC), encoding a MADS-domain transcription factor in Arabidopsis, is a repressor of flowering involved in the vernalization pathway. This provides a good reference for Brassica species. Genomes of Brassica species contain several FLC homologues and several of these colocalize with flowering-time QTL. Here the analysis of sequence variation of BrFLC1 in Brassica rapa and its a...

Flowering time is an important agronomic trait in almond since it is decisive to avoid the late frosts that affect production in early flowering cultivars. Evaluation of this complex trait is a long process because of the prolonged juvenile period of trees and the influence of environmental conditions affecting gene expression year by year. Consequently, flowering time has to be studied for sev...

We report the first study on the genetic control of flowering in Setaria, a panicoid grass closely related to switchgrass, and in the same subfamily as maize and sorghum. A recombinant inbred line mapping population derived from a cross between domesticated Setaria italica (foxtail millet) and its wild relative Setaria viridis (green millet), was grown in eight trials with varying environmental...