Vernalization genes determine winter/spring growth habit in temperate cereals and play important roles in plant development and environmental adaptation. In wheat (Triticum L. sp.), it was previously shown that allelic variation in the vernalization gene VRN1 was due to deletions or insertions either in the promoter or in the first intron. Here, we report a novel Vrn-B1 allele that has a retrot...

Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) accessions provide an excellent resource to dissect the molecular basis of adaptation. We have selected 192 Arabidopsis accessions collected to represent worldwide and local variation and analyzed two adaptively important traits, flowering time and vernalization response. There was huge variation in the flowering habit of the different accessions, with no simp...

While the metabolic networks in developing seeds during the period of reserve accumulation have been extensively characterized, much less is known about those present during seed desiccation and subsequent germination. Here we utilized metabolite profiling, in conjunction with selective mRNA and physiological profiling to characterize Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) seeds throughout developm...

Flowering time in plants is a tightly regulated process. In barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), HvFT1, ortholog of FLOWERING LOCUS T, is the main integrator of the photoperiod and vernalization signals leading to the transition from vegetative to reproductive state of the plant. This gene presents sequence polymorphisms affecting flowering time in the first intron and in the promoter. Recently, copy n...

Regulatory processes controlling traits such as anthesis timing and whole-plant senescence are of primary importance for reproductive success and for crop quality and yield. It has previously been demonstrated that the presence of alleles associated with high grain protein content (GPC) at a locus on barley chromosome six leads to accelerated leaf senescence, and to strong (>10-fold) up-regulat...