In Arabidopsis thaliana environmental and endogenous cues promote flowering by activating expression of a small number of integrator genes. The MADS box transcription factor SHORT VEGETATIVE PHASE (SVP) is a critical inhibitor of flowering that directly represses transcription of these genes. However, we show by genetic analysis that the effect of SVP cannot be fully explained by repressing kno...

Bamboos are an important member of the subfamily Bambusoideae, family Poaceae. The plant group exhibits wide variation with respect to the timing (1-120 years) and nature (sporadic vs. gregarious) of flowering among species. Usually flowering in woody bamboos is synchronous across culms growing over a large area, known as gregarious flowering. In many monocarpic bamboos this is followed by mass...

Winter-annual accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana are often characterized by a requirement for exposure to the cold of winter to initiate flowering in the spring. The block to flowering prior to cold exposure is due to high levels of the flowering repressor FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC). Exposure to cold promotes flowering through a process known as vernalization that epigenetically represses FLC expr...

Flowering is one of the most influential events in the life history of a plant and one of the main determinants of reproductive investment and lifetime fitness. It is also a highly complex trait controlled by dozens of genes. Understanding the selective pressures influencing time to flowering, and being able to reliably predict how it will evolve in novel environments, are unsolved challenges f...

Control of flowering in the perennial model, the woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca L.), involves distinct molecular mechanisms that result in contrasting photoperiodic flowering responses and growth cycles in different accessions. The F. vesca homolog of TERMINAL FLOWER1 (FvTFL1) functions as a key floral repressor that causes short-day (SD) requirement of flowering and seasonal flowering hab...

Garden pea (Pisum sativum) was prominent in early studies investigating the genetic control of flowering and the role of mobile flowering signals. In view of recent evidence that genes in the FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) family play an important role in generating mobile flowering signals, we isolated the FT gene family in pea and examined the regulation and function of its members. Comparison with M...

Flowering time and water-use efficiency (WUE) are two ecological traits that are important for plant drought response. To understand the evolutionary significance of natural genetic variation in flowering time, WUE, and WUE plasticity to drought in Arabidopsis thaliana, we addressed the following questions: (1) How are ecophysiological traits genetically correlated within and between different ...

The photoperiod pathway is a genetically conserved pathway that affects flowering in distantly related angiosperms. Here we report a novel flowering promoter AGAMOUS-LIKE 17 (AGL17) acting in the photoperiod pathway of Arabidopsis. AGL17 transcripts were detectable in various plant organs with the highest expression in the root. Under long-day conditions, expression of AGL17 gradually increased...

The effect of the major flowering gene (PPD) on seed weight of chickpea was studied on 450 F3 families from reciprocal crosses between a small-seeded, early-flowering (ppd/ppd ) type and a largeseeded, late flowering (PPD/PPD) cultivar. F4 progeny tests were carried out to determine the PPD genotypes of each individual F3. The effects of the PPD gene and the polygenes on mean seed weight were b...

Among the genes that control the transition to flowering in Arabidopsis is a large group whose inactivation causes a delay in flowering. It has been difficult to establish different pathways in which the flowering-time genes might act, because mutants with lesions in these genes have very similar phenotypes. Among the putative targets of the flowering-time genes is another group of genes, which...