Molecular mechanisms regulating yield and yield stability in plants
Securing food reserves for the growing world population will require inputs from various disciplines including plant biology, plant breeding, plant biotechnology, agricultural industries as well as farming. In the absence of precise knowledge about the underlying molecular mechanisms, progress in crop breeding and production will be difficult to achieve and the transfer of knowledge from model plants to crop plants or from one crop plant to another crop plant will not be obvious.
The SFB924 consortium brings together experts from different fields of plant biology such as plant reproduction biology, hormone biology, stress physiology, phytopathology and plant breeding that make use of high throughput technologies supported by bioinformatics and proteomics to resolve the molecular mechanisms that regulate yield and yield stability in plants. Research of the participating groups focuses on processes that regulate reproductive success as well as quantitative and qualitative aspects of seed formation (yield regulation). A second project area concentrates on the molecular mechanisms governing the interactions of plants with their abiotic and biotic environment (yield stability).
Transferability is the guiding principle of the research within the proposed SFB 924, which implies (1) that the knowledge about a specific molecular mechanism can be transferred from one plant species to another, (2) that the same molecular mechanisms may regulate different biological processes, or (3) that related signalling components may use similar regulatory mechanisms to regulate distinct processes in growth and development. The long-term goal of the SFB924 is to test the concept of transferability in the context of specific biological questions related to the regulation of yield formation and yield stability. Through synergistic interactions between individual groups and projects, the SFB924 makes significant contributions to the field and will have a strong impact on knowledge-based plant breeding programs and plant biotechnology.
To a very large extent, the research of the proposed SFB has only become possible through recent advances in genome sequencing and the establishment of the post-genomic tools for various plant species. These advances, together with the availability of next generation sequencing technologies allows now, for the first time, to address specific biological questions in different plant species and with the necessary degree of sophistication. It is an important goal of the proposed SFB to make the use and integration of these tools and methodologies a routine in the participating plant molecular biology laboratories, and to thereby train the next generation of plant biologists in the use of post-genomics tools and methodologies for plant science research.
