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PLANT REPRODUCTION AND BREEDING

Absent daddy, but important father

Mixing maternal and paternal genomes is the base of plant sexual reproduction, but some so-called ‘haploid inducer lines’ lead to the formation of seeds bearing well-developed embryos with solely the maternal genome. A recent study adds a new piece to the puzzle of this enigmatic in planta haploid embryo induction process.

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Fig. 1: Mutation in the phospholipase ZmPLD3 lead to haploid embryo induction in maize.

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Correspondence to Thomas Widiez.

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Competing interests

N.M.A.J is employee of Limagrain Europe. T.W. has pending patent applications (PCT/EP2016/060202 (published as WO2016177887) and EP3091076).

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Jacquier, N.M.A., Widiez, T. Absent daddy, but important father. Nat. Plants 7, 1544–1545 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-01030-9

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