Sufficient food production is threatened by the fast-growing world population and global climate change. To produce sufficient food for future generations in a sustainable manner, it is necessary to develop innovative strategies for plant production. This can only be achieved through an increased fundamental knowledge on how plants develop. This project intends to contribute to increase plant yield by studying pathways that control inflorescence development.
The architecture of plant inflorescences is an important factor for crop yield because it determines the number of developing flowers, and thereby fruits and seeds. The shape of the inflorescence is established by the activity of meristems, as inflorescence, branching and flower meristems. The inflorescence and branching meristems, which are indeterminate, define the size and the complexity of the inflorescence and thereby the numbers of flowers that can develop, whereas the determinate flower meristems form the final stage and stop further growth of the inflorescence. Therefore, the timing of the meristem identity transition from indeterminate to determinate importantly influences crop yield. In this project we study the regulatory pathways that control these meristem transitions with a focus on inflorescence meristem longevity and branching meristem identity
determination.
The complexity of an inflorescence and the quality of the fruits and seeds that develop is not only dependent on reproductive meristems activities but also on the inflorescence stem that has an important function in transporting the necessary nutrients. Increasing the numbers of fruits and seeds will need increased allocation of resources to the newly developing organs. Therefore, our research project also includes the study of stem development. This research builds on recent results that indicate the involvement of flowering time regulators in stem and vascular development.
For our research we use two important model systems, Arabidopsis and rice, which represent dicot and monocot species. Moreover, for our stem development research, we move from rice and Arabidopsis into ancient ferns that do not make inflorescences, flowers and seeds but reproduce by spores. We include this “out-of-the-box” study to explore whether there is conservation in the function of ancient “flowering” orthologous genes in stem development in ferns. This will contribute to identify the fundamental pathways that control stem development.
The project is performed by two research teams with a strong expertise in the field of molecular genetics research in plant reproductive development and they have excellent facilities to execute this innovative research project.