VIB Researchers Convert Annuals to Perennials

Annual plants grow, flower and die within one year. Perennials, on the other hand, live for more than two years. The life strategy of many annuals consists of rapid growth following germination, to eliminate the need to compete for food and light, and rapid transition to flower and seed formation. Cereal crops are mostly annual grasses. Unlike annuals, perennials invest for the long term. They make permanent structures such as overwintering buds or bulbs. Scientists at the Flanders Institute of Biotechnology (VIB) and Ghent University successfully converted annual plants to perennials by silencing two genes.

The VIB researchers deactivated a pair of flower inducing genes in the model plant Arabidopsis, a typical annual. These genes are normally activated in the advent of long days in the spring. Mutant plants can no longer induce flowering, but they can continue to grow vegetatively or come into flower much later. As with real perennials, these plants show secondary growth with wood formation creating shrub-like Arabidopsis plants.

The scientists noted that the silencing of these genes might be an important mechanism in plant evolution, initiating the formation of trees.

The complete news article is available at http://www.vib.be/NR/rdonlyres/E8FB2BC8-3D32-4D76-BFC1-9609FA07C689/2762/20081107_ENG_Beeckman_bloeiinductie_web.pdf