Salicylic Acid-Mediated Stress-Induced Flowering
Plants have a tendency to flower under unsuitable growth conditions. Stress factors, such as poor nutrition, high or low temperature, high- or low-intensity light, and ultraviolet light, have been implicated in this stress-induced flowering. The stressed
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Salicylic Acid-Mediated Stress-Induced Flowering K. C. Wada and K. Takeno
Abstract Plants have a tendency to flower under unsuitable growth conditions. Stress factors, such as poor nutrition, high or low temperature, high- or lowintensity light, and ultraviolet light, have been implicated in this stress-induced flowering. The stressed plants do not wait for the arrival of a season when photoperiodic conditions are suitable for flowering, and such precocious flowering might assist in species preservation. Stress-induced flowering has been well studied in Pharbitis nil (synonym Ipomoea nil), Perilla frutescens var. crispa, Lemna paucicostata (synonym Lemna aequinoctialis) and Arabidopsis thaliana. The phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) inhibitor suppresses stress-induced flowering in P. nil, and this effect was reversed with salicylic acid (SA). The PAL gene expression, PAL enzyme activity and SA content in the cotyledons increased during stress-induced flowering. These results suggest that SA mediates stressinduced flowering.
Keywords Flowering FLOWERING LOCUS T Lemna paucicostata Perilla frutescens Pharbitis nil Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase Salicylic acid Stress Stress-induced flowering
K. C. Wada Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Faculty of Agriculture, Niigata University, Ikarashi, Niigata 950-2181, Japan K. Takeno (&) Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Niigata University, Ikarashi, Niigata 950-2181, Japan e-mail: [email protected] K. Takeno Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Ikarashi, Niigata 950-2181, Japan
S. Hayat et al. (eds.), Salicylic Acid, DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-6428-6_9, Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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K. C. Wada and K. Takeno
1 Introduction After a period of vegetative growth, plants switch to reproductive growth to produce the next generation. The switch from vegetative to reproductive growth is called flowering. Flowering is regulated through both endogenous and environmental factors. One endogenous factor is the autonomous pathway for the regulation of flowering, which has been well characterized in Arabidopsis thaliana (Simpson 2004). Day-neutral plants switch from vegetative to reproductive growth in response to endogenous signals after a designated period of time (McDaniel 1996). Environmental factors that regulate flowering include the duration of the day and night periods in photoperiodic flowering and low temperature in vernalization (Thomas and Vince-Prue 1997). The flowering stimulus, which is produced in leaves under adequate photoperiodic conditions, is transferred to the shoot apical meristem, and induces the transition from the vegetative apical meristem to floral meristem, is called florigen. The isolation and identification of florigen has been long considered as an important research subject in plant physiology. Recently, the proteins derived from the floral pathway integrator gene of A. thaliana, FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), and its homologs have been characterized as florigens in seve
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