Using Arabidopsis to Study Shoot Branching in Biomass Willow      

Abstract

The success of the short-rotation coppice system in biomass willow (Salix spp.) relies on the activity of the shoot-producing meristems found on the coppice stool. However, the regulation of the activity of these meristems is poorly understood. In contrast, our knowledge of the mechanisms behind axillary meristem regulation in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) has grown rapidly in the past few years through the exploitation of integrated physiological, genetic, and molecular assays. Here, we demonstrate that these assays can be directly transferred to study the control of bud activation in biomass willow and to assess similarities with the known hormone regulatory system in Arabidopsis. Bud hormone response was found to be qualitatively remarkably similar in Salix spp. and Arabidopsis. These similarities led us to test whether Arabidopsis hormone mutants could be used to assess allelic variation in the cognate Salix spp. hormone genes. Allelic differences in Salix spp. strigolactone genes were observed using this approach. These results demonstrate that both knowledge and assays from Arabidopsis axillary meristem biology can be successfully applied to Salix spp. and can increase our understanding of a fundamental aspect of short-rotation coppice biomass production, allowing more targeted breeding.

Exploring natural variation of Pinus pinaster Aiton using metabolomics: Is it possible to identify the region of origin of a pine from its metabolites?

“…; Ward et al . ). In regression tree analysis, sorgolactone (N1935) was also detected as one of the most significant metabolites in explaining variance related to aridity and total growth parameters (Fig b).…”

Knockdown of strigolactone biosynthesis genes in Populus affects BRANCHED1 expression and shoot architecture

“…). Inhibition of outgrowth of the lower bud and unaffected outgrowth of the upper bud were also observed in chrysanthemum and willow (Liang et al ., ; Ward et al ., ). Possibly, the bud that is apical in a two‐node assay has been closer to establishing its own PATS in the intact plant.…”

Functional screening of willow alleles in Arabidopsis combined with QTL mapping in willow (Salix) identifies SxMAX4 as a coppicing response gene

“…This arginine is present in all other genera studied. SxMAX4E carried several additional changes (Figure ) and has been reported previously (Ward et al ., ).…”

“…We previously demonstrated that strigolactone affects willow bud activity in a very similar manner to Arabidopsis (Ward et al ., ). Furthermore, transformation rescue of Arabidopsis max mutants can be used as a platform to identify functional variation between willow MAX alleles (Ward et al ., ). In this present study, this approach was exploited to identify allelic variation underlying coppicing response.…”