Whitfieldhougaard8475

Leaf senescence is a developmental process designed for nutrient recycling and relocation to maximize growth competence and reproductive capacity of plants. Thus, plants integrate developmental and environmental signals to precisely control senescence. To genetically dissect the complex regulatory mechanism underlying leaf senescence, we identified an early leaf senescence mutant, rse1. RSE1 encodes a putative glycosyltransferase. Loss-of-function mutations in RSE1 resulted in precocious leaf yellowing and up-regulation of senescence marker genes, indicating enhanced leaf senescence. Transcriptome analysis revealed that salicylic acid (SA) and defense signaling cascades were up-regulated in rse1 prior to the onset of leaf senescence. We found that SA accumulation was significantly increased in rse1. The rse1 phenotypes are dependent on SA-INDUCTION DEFICIENT 2 (SID2), supporting a role of SA in accelerated leaf senescence in rse1. Mocetinostat ic50 Furthermore, RSE1 protein was localized to the cell wall, implying a possible link between the cell wall and RSE1 function. Together, we show that RSE1 negatively modulates leaf senescence through an SID2-dependent SA signaling pathway.Leaf or brown rust of wheat caused by Puccinia triticina (Pt) is one of the most damaging diseases globally. Considerable progress has been made to control leaf rust through crop protection chemicals and host plant resistance breeding in southern Africa. However, frequent changes in the pathogen population still present a major challenge to achieve durable resistance. Disease surveillance and monitoring of the pathogen have revealed the occurrence of similar races across the region, justifying the need for concerted efforts by countries in southern Africa to develop and deploy more efficient and sustainable strategies to manage the disease. Understanding the genetic variability and composition of Pt is a pre-requisite for cultivar release with appropriate resistance gene combinations for sustainable disease management. This review highlights the variability and distribution of the Pt population, and the current control strategies, challenges and future prospects of breeding wheat varieties with durable leaf rust resistance in southern Africa. The importance of regular, collaborative and efficient surveillance of the pathogen and germplasm development across southern Africa is discussed, coupled with the potential of using modern breeding technologies to produce wheat cultivars with durable resistance.Wheat production in southern Australia is reliant on autumn (April-May) rainfall to germinate seeds and allow timely establishment. Reliance on autumn rainfall can be removed by sowing earlier than currently practiced and using late summer and early autumn rainfall to establish crops, but this requires slower developing cultivars to match life-cycle to seasonal conditions. While slow-developing wheat cultivars sown early in the sowing window (long-cycle), have in some cases increased yield in comparison to the more commonly grown fast-developing cultivars sown later (short-cycle), the yield response is variable between environments. In irrigated wheat in the sub-tropics, the variable response has been linked to ability to withstand water stress, but the mechanism behind this is unknown. We compared short- vs. long-cycle cultivars × time of sowing combinations over four seasons (2011, 2012, 2015, and 2016) at Temora, NSW, Australia. Two seasons (2011 and 2012) had above average summer fallow (December-March) rong-cycle treatments when the volume of starting soil water was increased. This work reveals environmental conditions that can be used to quantify the frequency of circumstances where long-cycle wheat will provide a yield advantage over current practice.Root phenotypic plasticity has been proposed as a target for the development of more productive crops in variable environments. However, the plasticity of root anatomical and architectural responses to environmental cues is highly complex, and the consequences of these responses for plant fitness are poorly understood. We propose that root phenotypic plasticity may be beneficial in natural or low-input systems in which the availability of soil resources is spatiotemporally dynamic. Crop ancestors and landraces were selected with multiple stresses, competition, significant root loss and heterogenous resource distribution which favored plasticity in response to resource availability. However, in high-input agroecosystems, the value of phenotypic plasticity is unclear, since human management has removed many of these constraints to root function. Further research is needed to understand the fitness landscape of plastic responses including understanding the value of plasticity in different environments, environmental signals that induce plastic responses, and the genetic architecture of plasticity before it is widely adopted in breeding programs. Phenotypic plasticity has many potential ecological, and physiological benefits, but its costs and adaptive value in high-input agricultural systems is poorly understood and merits further research.Meiosis plays an essential role in the production of gametes and genetic diversity of posterities. The normal double-strand break (DSB) repair is vital to homologous recombination (HR) and occurrence of DNA fragment exchange, but the underlying molecular mechanism remain elusive. Here, we characterized a completely sterile Osmfs1 (male and female sterility 1) mutant which has its pollen and embryo sacs both aborted at the reproductive stage due to severe chromosome defection. Map-based cloning revealed that the OsMFS1 encodes a meiotic coiled-coil protein, and it is responsible for DSB repairing that acts as an important cofactor to stimulate the single strand invasion. Expression pattern analyses showed the OsMFS1 was preferentially expressed in meiosis stage. Subcellular localization analysis of OsMFS1 revealed its association with the nucleus exclusively. In addition, a yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) and pull-down assay showed that OsMFS1 could physically interact with OsHOP2 protein to form a stable complex to ensure faithful homologous recombination. Taken together, our results indicated that OsMFS1 is indispensable to the normal development of anther and embryo sacs in rice.Climate change and the exploration of new areas of cultivation have impacted the yields of several economically important crops worldwide. Both conventional plant breeding based on planned crosses between parents with specific traits and genetic engineering to develop new biotechnological tools (NBTs) have allowed the development of elite cultivars with new features of agronomic interest. The use of these NBTs in the search for agricultural solutions has gained prominence in recent years due to their rapid generation of elite cultivars that meet the needs of crop producers, and the efficiency of these NBTs is closely related to the optimization or best use of their elements. Currently, several genetic engineering techniques are used in synthetic biotechnology to successfully improve desirable traits or remove undesirable traits in crops. However, the features, drawbacks, and advantages of each technique are still not well understood, and thus, these methods have not been fully exploited. Here, we provide a brief overview of the plant genetic engineering platforms that have been used for proof of concept and agronomic trait improvement, review the major elements and processes of synthetic biotechnology, and, finally, present the major NBTs used to improve agronomic traits in socioeconomically important crops.One of the major constraints limiting biomass production in autotrophs is the low thermodynamic efficiency of photosynthesis, ranging from 1 to 4%. Given the absorption spectrum of photosynthetic pigments and the spectral distribution of sunlight, photosynthetic efficiencies as high as 11% are possible. It is well-recognized that the greatest thermodynamic inefficiencies in photosynthesis are associated with light absorption and conversion of excited states into chemical energy. This is due to the fact that photosynthesis light saturates at one quarter full sunlight intensity in plants resulting in the dissipation of excess energy as heat, fluorescence and through the production of damaging reactive oxygen species. Recently, it has been demonstrated that it is possible to adjust the size of the light harvesting antenna over a broad range of optical cross sections through targeted reductions in chlorophyll b content, selectively resulting in reductions of the peripheral light harvesting antenna size, especiallarvesting antenna size of plants is designed to maximize fitness under low light conditions such as occurs in shaded environments and in light competition with other plants.For researchers in the plant metal field, the agar reagent used for the solid plate medium is a problematic factor because application of different agar types and even a different lot of the same agar type can mask the plant metal-related phenotypes and impair the reproducibility. In this study, we systematically assessed effects of different agar reagents on metal(loid) sensitivity and element accumulation of the Arabidopsis metal sensitive mutants. Three established mutants (cad1-3, cad1-6, and abcc1/2), and three different types of purified agar reagents (Type A, Type E, and Nacalai) with two independent batches for each reagent were subjected to the analyses. First, we found that element concentrations in the agar reagents largely varied among the agar types. Then the effects of agar reagents on the mutant metal(loid)-sensitivity were examined under As(III), Hg(II), Cd(II), and excess Zn(II) conditions. A significant variation of the mutant metal(loid)-sensitivity was observed among the different agar plads on the experimental design, and an inappropriate selection of agar reagents can mask even very clear phenotypes of the established mutant like cad1-3. We also discuss perspectives on the agar problem in the plant metal study.New kinase has emerged throughout evolution, but how new kinase evolve while maintaining their functions and acquiring new functions remains unclear. Fructokinase (FRK), the gateway kinase to fructose metabolism, plays essential roles in plant development, and stress tolerance. Here, we explored the evolution of FRK gene family in 20 plant species (from green algae to angiosperms) and their functional roles in Populus. We identified 125 putative FRK genes in the 20 plant species with an average of 6 members per species. Phylogenetic analysis separated these 125 genes into 8 clades including 3 conserved clades and 5 specific clades, the 5 of which only exist in green algae or angiosperms. Evolutionary analysis revealed that FRK genes in ancient land plants have the largest number of functional domains with the longest amino acid sequences, and the length of FRK genes became shorter during the transition to vascular plants. This was accompanied by loss, acquisition, and diversification of functional domains. In Populus, segmental duplication appears to be the main mechanism for the expansion of FRK genes. Specially, most FRK genes duplicated in salicoids are regulated by Populus-specific microRNAs. Furthermore, compared with common FRKs, Populus-specific FRKs have showed higher expression specificity and are associated with fewer growth and wood property traits, which suggests that these FRKs may have undergone functional divergence. Our study explores the specific roles of FRKs in the Populus genome and provides new insights for functional investigation of this gene family.