Scientists Identify New Plant Hormone

Scientists from the Wageningen University in the Netherlands have discovered a new group of phytohormones crucial for the branching of plants. The scientists identified mutants of pea that were branching without restraint. It turned out that these mutants were not capable of producing strigolactones, a group of chemicals known to be involved in the interaction between plants and their environment. Strigolactones have been shown to trigger the germination of parasitic plant seeds and stimulate symbiotic fungi.

When strigolactones were administered to the mutant peas, the unrestrained branching stopped. Strigolactones were also shown to possess characteristics typical of phytohormones: they are transported internally, they work at very low concentration and a specific ‘receptor reaction’ for the strigolactones occurs in plants. The same observations were made by scientists working on strigolactones-deficient rice mutants from the RIKEN Plant Science Center and Tokyo University in Japan.

The discovery provides the basis for applications in forestry, horticulture and crop science where strigolactones, unlike other hormones such as cytokinin and auxin, may be used to specifically regulate shoot branching with minimal side effects and without the need for transgenic technology.

Read more at http://www.wur.nl/UK/newsagenda/news/Planthormone080812.htm The advanced online papers published by Nature is available to subscribers at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature07271.html and http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature07272.html