| Abstract Detail
Emerging Leader Lecture - Madelaine Bartlett Bartlett, Madelaine [1]. Architecture matters: the evo-devo of agronomically important plant traits. Plant architecture is a significant contributor to crop breeding success and crop yield. For example, the separate male and female flowers of maize make controlled crosses and, in turn, hybrid seed production, relatively easy. This is not the case in rice, or in many orphan and emerging grass crops, where making hybrids is more challenging. In maize, unisexual flower development is mediated by growth repression in the stamen primordia of female flowers, and in the carpel primordia of male flowers. Thus, a trait with major agronomic consequences, floral sexuality, is regulated by a fundamental developmental process – growth repression. Similarly, a major contributor to fruit production in many crops, including maize and tomato, is meristem size: bigger meristems produce more, bigger organs. Thus, a second fundamental developmental process, the regulation of stem cell proliferation, has important consequences for crop productivity. This key role for plant development in agriculture makes a deep understanding of developmental genetics critically important, especially in the age of genome engineering. I will discuss my lab’s work studying the genetic underpinnings of plant development and the evolution of developmental genes, with a particular focus on floral sexuality and meristem size.
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1 - University Of Massachusetts Amherst, 611 North Pleasant Street, 374 Morrill 4 South, Amherst, MA, 01003, United States
Keywords:
none specified
Presentation Type: Special Presentations
Session: S6, Emerging Leader Lecture
Location: Tucson E/Starr Pass
Date: Wednesday, July 31st, 2019
Time: 1:30 PM
Number: S6001
Abstract ID:446
Candidate for Awards:None |
