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How hormones regulate floral architecture in barley

A defining characteristic of grasses, including major cereal crops, is the way in which flowers are arranged on an inflorescence. A new study finds that regulation of hormone levels during development is crucial for determining the arrangement of flowers on a barley inflorescence, opening new doors for increasing grain yield.

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Figure 1: In wild-type (WT) barley, Vrs2 (gray background) is expressed in a basal-to-apical gradient along the inflorescence, regulating the concentration gradients of auxin (red), cytokinin (blue) and gibberellin (GA; green), thereby promoting development of spikelet primordia (green bump) into two-rowed spikelets (solid arrow).

Marina Corral Spence/Springer Nature

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Boden, S. How hormones regulate floral architecture in barley. Nat Genet 49, 8–9 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3750

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