Testing a cytokinin dilution model of floral duration in barley

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The seeds and fruit produced by flowering in plants provides the vast majority of calories consumed by human societies. Plants attempt to optimize their reproductive success by correctly timing the initiation and duration of flowering, to produce the 'correct' number of seed for prevailing environmental conditions. In cereal crops, including the key UK crop barley, the duration of flowering determines the number of flowers formed, and the 'yield potential' of the crop. Using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, we have recently shown that the concentration of the plant hormone cytokinin determines how long Arabidopsis flowers for. As cytokinin becomes diluted across the increasingly large shoot system, plants stop producing and opening flowers, leading to the end of flowering. Based on preliminary evidence, we believe that this same mechanism also regulates duration of flowering - and hence yield potential - in cereal crops. We hypothesise that increasing cytokinin sensitivity in cereals will therefore increase the duration of flowering and their yield potential. In this proposal, we aim to test this hypothesis using a combination of high-resolution phenotyping, advanced bioimaging, transcriptomics and classical and molecular genetics. Understanding the mechanisms controlling flowering duration will allow us to challenge current limitations on crop yields, and drive a timely change in yield potential in barley and other key cereal crops. This will help to meet the pressing need to produce more food to feed the growing global population.