Crop production is greatly influenced by the duration of the last stage of plant life cycle, senescence, through degradation of resources in leaves and remobilization of nutrients to developing seeds. Indeed, higher grain yield of important cereals such as maize and sorghum can be achieved by using stay-green (sgr) mutants characterized by delayed senescence. Nevertheless, […]
Climate change severely affects plant growth and jeopardizes yields of essential seed crops such as rice. Still, the mechanisms underlying the synergistic regulation of abiotic stress response and important agronomic traits remain poorly understood. Dong et al. cloned and characterized a major QTL in rice, named Grain Size and Abiotic stress tolerance 1 (GSA1) after […]
Over the past decade, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) has been used for de novo assembly of crop genomes (i.e., tomato, potato) under the motto “If it tastes good, let’s sequence it”. By contrast, the One Thousand Plant (1KP) Initiative set out to obtain transcriptomic data of phylogenetically diverse green plant species without any apparent economic […]
Biofuels can be obtained from bioenergy crops such as sorghum, maize and sugarcane. However, the production of bioethanol is still more expensive than that of petroleum. Given the importance of replacing conventional fossil fuels with renewable liquid fuels, the biorefinery system should be improved to reach the Minimum Ethanol Selling Price (MESP) of $2.50/galllon. One […]
Flower development has always been a fascinating field of research in plant biology. While molecular studies in the past focused on regulatory genes involved in the formation of floral organs in model species, current investigations are addressing the genetic determinants underlying the huge variety of flower. Recently, the genetic basis of the double flower trait […]
Among the myriad small interfering RNAs, 21- and 24-nucleotides siRNAs control plant development and immunity through mRNA cleavage and RNA-directed DNA methylation, respectively. Still, the regulation and biological function of 22-nt siRNAs remain unresolved. In this report, Wu and coworkers investigated the massive accumulation of 22-nt siRNAs in plants with mutations in DICER-like 4 (DCL4) […]
Thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) has been the absolute star of plant science research for more than 40 years, being the ideal model organism for its ease of handling and transferable knowledge to crops. In this review, Cesarino and coworkers explain how advances in “omics” technologies, together with improvements in molecular techniques and genetic transformation, have […]
Archeological remains and genetic analyses of ancient DNA have revealed that the loss of seed dispersal marks the onset of domestication for sexually reproduced crops such as cereal, legume and oils seed crops, for which annual cultivation is based on sowing seeds. In contrast, less is known about the domestication of vegetatively propagating plants including […]
To date, archeobotanical and genetic studies indicated four centers of plant cultivation in the early Holocene: China and the Near East in the Old World, and southwestern Mexico and northwestern South America in the New World. Recent research of Lombardo et al. revealed that Llanos de Moxos (Bolivia) in southwestern Amazonia could also be a […]