A big bunch of tomatoes?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 09:42
in Biology & Nature
Why do poppies and sunflowers grow as a single flower per stalk while each stem of a tomato plant has several branches, each carrying flowers? In a new study, published in this week's issue of the open access journal PLoS Biology, Dr. Zachary Lippman and colleagues identify a genetic mechanism that determines the pattern of flower growth in the Solanaceae (nightshade) family of plants that includes tomato, potato, pepper, eggplant, tobacco, petunia, and deadly nightshades. Manipulation of the identified pathway can turn the well known tomato vine into a highly branched structure with hundreds of flower-bearing shoots, and may thereby result in increased crop yields.