Finding the right balance: The enduring role of florigens during cereal inflorescence development and their influence on fertility
- PMID: 38599051
- DOI: 10.1016/j.pbi.2024.102539
Finding the right balance: The enduring role of florigens during cereal inflorescence development and their influence on fertility
Abstract
Flowering is a vital process in a plant's lifecycle and variation for flowering-time has helped cereals adapt to diverse environments. Much cereal research has focused on understanding how flowering signals, or florigens, regulate the floral transition and timing of ear emergence. However, flowering genes also perform an enduring role during inflorescence development, with genotypes that elicit a weaker flowering signal producing more elaborately branched inflorescences with extra floret-bearing spikelets. While this outcome indicates that variable expression of flowering genes could boost yield potential, further analysis has shown that dampened florigen levels can compromise fertility, negating the benefit of extra grain-producing sites. Here, we discuss ways that florigens contribute to early and late inflorescence development, including their influence on branch/spikelet architecture and fertility. We propose that a deeper understanding of the role for florigens during inflorescence development could be used to balance the effects of florigens throughout flowering to improve productivity.
Keywords: Cereals; Fertility; Florigens; Flowering-time; Inflorescence.
Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.
Conflict of interest statement
Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships that may be considered as potential competing interests: Scott Boden reports financial support was provided by Australian Research Council. Scott Boden reports financial support was provided by Grains Research and Development Corporation. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.
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