Researchers One Step Closer in Developing Shatter-Resistant Brassicas

Oilseed rape is one of the most important oilseed crops grown in the world but is subject to significant seed losses because of pod shattering, which causes a 10-25 percent loss of seeds and up to 70 percent in some cases. Pod-shattering is an advantage in nature, allowing efficient seed dispersal. But is one of the biggest problems in farming oilseed rape and other Brassica crops. To make matters worse, volunteer seedlings arising from the unharvested seed also cause significant contamination of subsequent crops.

Scientists at the John Innes Center in England think they may have solved this problem. By producing a hormone in a specific region of the fruit, the researchers have stopped the fruit opening in the related model plant Arabidopsis, completely sealing the seeds inside. Lars Østergaard and colleagues found out that the absence of the hormone auxin in a layer of cells in the fruit is necessary for the fruit to open. Auxin, considered as the master manipulator of plant development, coordinates numerous growth and behavioral processes in the plant life cycle, including cell division and elongation, leaf senescence and fruit ripening. According to the researchers, this is the first time that removal of a hormone has been found to be important for plant cell fate and growth.

Read the press release at http://www.jic.ac.uk/corporate/media-and-public/current-releases/090527podshatter.htm The paper published by Nature is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature07875