Eula Trixie Denulan

Bot 121 Reporting

Report: Synthetic control of flowering in rice independent of the cultivation environment

1. How does Ghd7 inhibits the flowering of rice varieties?

- develop non-flowering plants for several rice varieties by overexpressing a floral
repressor gene, Grain number, plant height and heading date 7 (Ghd7) in the
promoter region of a maize ubiquitin gene. Ghd7 can repress several floral promotion
genes in rice, such as Early heading date 1 (Ehd1), Heading date 3a (Hd3a)6 and Rice
FT-like 1 (RFT1). Orthologous floral repression systems exist in other cereals, such as
maize and sorghum. It has previously been shown that repression of both the Hd3a and
the RFT1 florigen genes results in non-flowering phenotypes in rice13. Indeed, some
Ghd7-overexpressing transgenic rice plants never flowered. In some plants, we
observed non-flowering phenotypes for more than 3 years by passage through tillers. As
expected, the endogenous rice florigen genes Hd3a and RFT1 were severely repressed
in non-flowering plants. Thus, we succeeded in completely inhibiting spontaneous
flowering in a particular environment.

2. Why is there a need to control the timing of rice independently of the cultivation environment?
- the ability to control the timing of flowering for rice independently of the cultivation
environment would permit more accurate evaluation of agronomical performance
for various genetic varieties. Furthermore, this would enable determination of the
optimal cultivation time course (‘crop season’) for agronomical performance in a given
local environment.