TY - JOUR

T1 - Chemical control of flowering time

AU - Ionescu, Irina Alexandra

AU - Møller, Birger Lindberg

AU - Sánchez Pérez, Raquel

N1 - © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - Flowering at the right time is of great importance; it secures seed production and therefore species survival and crop yield. In addition to the genetic network controlling flowering time, there are a number of much less studied metabolites and exogenously applied chemicals that may influence the transition to flowering as well as flower opening. Increased emphasis on research within this area has the potential to counteract the negative effects of global warming on flowering time, especially in perennial crop plants. Perennial crops have a requirement for winter chill, but winters become increasingly warm in temperate regions. This has dramatic effects on crop yield. Different strategies are therefore being developed to engineer flowering time to match local growing conditions. The majority of these efforts are within plant breeding, which benefits from a substantial amount of knowledge on the genetic aspects of flowering time regulation in annuals, but less so in perennials. An alternative to plant breeding approaches is to engineer flowering time chemically via the external application of flower-inducing compounds. This review discusses a variety of exogenously applied compounds used in fruit farming to date, as well as endogenous growth substances and metabolites that can influence flowering time of annuals and perennials.

AB - Flowering at the right time is of great importance; it secures seed production and therefore species survival and crop yield. In addition to the genetic network controlling flowering time, there are a number of much less studied metabolites and exogenously applied chemicals that may influence the transition to flowering as well as flower opening. Increased emphasis on research within this area has the potential to counteract the negative effects of global warming on flowering time, especially in perennial crop plants. Perennial crops have a requirement for winter chill, but winters become increasingly warm in temperate regions. This has dramatic effects on crop yield. Different strategies are therefore being developed to engineer flowering time to match local growing conditions. The majority of these efforts are within plant breeding, which benefits from a substantial amount of knowledge on the genetic aspects of flowering time regulation in annuals, but less so in perennials. An alternative to plant breeding approaches is to engineer flowering time chemically via the external application of flower-inducing compounds. This review discusses a variety of exogenously applied compounds used in fruit farming to date, as well as endogenous growth substances and metabolites that can influence flowering time of annuals and perennials.

U2 - 10.1093/jxb/erw427

DO - 10.1093/jxb/erw427

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 28204655

VL - 68

SP - 369

EP - 382

JO - Journal of Experimental Botany

JF - Journal of Experimental Botany

SN - 0022-0957

IS - 3

ER -