Wouldn’t it be nice to harvest wheat from the same field, without having to plant new wheat plants? Thanks to Leiden scientists, that could become possible. But how? They discovered a gene that allows annual plants to grow after flowering, rather than dying.
On a plant’s stem, there are growing points, which are groups of stem cells that can form new stems with flowers or leaves. Those growing points remain vegetative in perennial plants so that after flowering, the plant can keep growing in the next season. However, this does not happen in annual plants, and the plant dies. A team led by Remko Offringa of the Institute of Biology Leiden discovered a gene called AH15 that determines whether growing points of a plant will remain vegetative after the flowering phase.
In the study, published in the journal Nature Plants, the team used the thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana (a typical annual plant). They overexpressed the gene in Arabidopsis so that it would be much more active than usual. Resulting in the modified Arabidopsis plants having some growing points remain in the vegetative phase, just like perennial plants. The plants successfully continued to grow after flowering and blossomed several times. When the researchers disabled the gene, the plants had a shorter lifespan than average. This demonstrated that the AH15 gene, dubbed REJUVENATOR, regulates longevity in plants.
Offringa believes that the discovery of the gene could help understand why during evolution, some species have become perennial while others annuals. It also contributes to fundamental knowledge about plant life aging and history.
Many food crops and flowers like Zinnia, marigold, corn, wheat, rice, lettuce, peas, watermelon, and beans are annuals. By keeping growing points vegetative and allowing the plants to continue to grow after harvesting, it may allow for multiple harvests from the same crop. This method will increase the yield per plant. As a bonus, farmers don’t have to plow as often when they grow plants that bloom more often, and the soil biome will stay intact, which works well with sustainable production in agriculture.
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