Abstract: This chapter focuses on genetic approaches to photoperiodism. The application of physiological and molecular genetics to the photoperiodic control of flowering is helping to clarify some of the long-standing questions in plant physiology. In particular, Arabidopsis mutants offer the prospect of physically isolating genes that code for components of the photoperiodic mechanism. The late flowering mutants co and gi are good candidates for plants that are modified in their photoperiodic induction processes, and some of the early flowering mutants are also probably impaired in photoperiod perception or transduction of the day length signal. Photoreceptor mutants have shown a probable role for phytochrome A in sensing long days in the long-day plants (LDP), Arabidopsis, in agreement with physiological experiments, which have identified a requirement for FR light at certain times in the photoperiod for the promotion of flowering in light-dominant LDP. As yet there are no short-day plants (SDPs), either mutants or transgenic in which phytochrome A expression is prevented, for clarifying the role of phytochrome A in SD-sensing species. The role of light-stable phytochromes appears similar in LDP and SDP and these phytochromes modulate the response to day length; phytochrome B in the LDP Arabidopsis and a phytochrome B-like light-stable phytochrome in the SDP Sorghum.
Publication Year: 1997
Publication Date: 1997-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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