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Expression of FLOWERING LOCUS T from Arabidopsis thaliana induces precocious flowering in soybean irrespective of maturity group and stem growth habit

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Abstract

The flowering integrator gene FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) in Arabidopsis thaliana is conserved between diverse plant species and is thought to be the flowering signal ‘‘florigen’’, a universal long-distance mobile signal. In soybean, two FT homologs having a function to induce flowering in Arabidopsis have been identified. In this study, we showed that the expression of FT from Arabidopsis by the Apple latent spherical virus (ALSV) vector promoted precocious flowering and terminated vegetative growth in a wide range of genotypes of soybean, without using a short-day treatment. Four determinate and two indeterminate cultivars, infected with ALSV expressing FT (FT-ALSV), set flower buds on shoot apices and terminated vegetative growth at the fourth- to seventh-node stages under long-day conditions. In contrast, non-infected, healthy plants did not set flower buds on shoot apices at the same stage under the same conditions. After flowering, soybean cultivars infected with FT-ALSV, belonging to different maturity groups and stem growth habits, matured and produced seeds. The results suggest that the basic flowering pathway controlled by FT in A. thaliana might also be conserved in soybean. A system for precocious flowering and shortening of generation time using FT-ALSV would be a useful and novel technology for efficient soybean breeding.

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Abbreviations

ALSV:

Apple latent spherical virus

FT :

FLOWERING LOCUS T

CO :

CONSTANS

bZIP:

Basic region–leucine zipper

SD:

Short-day

LD:

Long-day

TFL1 :

TERMINAL FLOWER1

dpi:

Days post-inoculation

RT-PCR:

Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Shuji Yokoi (Iwate University) for critical reading of the manuscript, and to Drs. Shinji Sakai and Soh Hidaka (National Agricultural Research Center Tohoku region), and Dr. Noriyuki Furutani (Kyoto Prefectural Institute of Agriculture) for helpful suggestions. We also thank Dr. Makoto Tougou (National Agricultural Research Center Tohoku region) and the National Agricultural Research Center Tohoku region for supplying soybean seeds of cultivars ‘Jack’, ‘Suzukari’, and ‘Hatayutaka’ and ‘Dewamusume’ and ‘Nemasirazu’. This work was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid from KAKENHI (no. 20380025) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.

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  1. Plant Pathology Laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, Iwate University, Morioka, 020-8550, Japan

    Noriko Yamagishi & Nobuyuki Yoshikawa

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  1. Noriko Yamagishi
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  2. Nobuyuki Yoshikawa
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Correspondence to Nobuyuki Yoshikawa.

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Yamagishi, N., Yoshikawa, N. Expression of FLOWERING LOCUS T from Arabidopsis thaliana induces precocious flowering in soybean irrespective of maturity group and stem growth habit. Planta 233, 561–568 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-010-1318-3

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