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Architecture optimization

Compact plants enhance productivity

Nature Plants volume 8, pages 1335–1336 (2022)Cite this article

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The long and trailing vines of most cucurbits represent an undomesticated trait that hampers dense planting and yields, and also incurs a high labour cost. A targeted artificial evolution strategy was developed to suppress stem elongation of cucurbits in a dose-dependent manner, thereby enhancing yield and reducing labour costs.

Breeding crops that produce higher yields with lower labour inputs is very important owing to human population increases and rising labour costs1. Cucurbit crops, such as cucumber, loofah, pumpkin, watermelon and melon, provide nutritious and delicious vegetables and fleshy fruits for human diets. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the global yield of cucurbits has increased by more than fivefold in the past 50 years — an increase that is largely attributable to an expansion in planting area, as the yield per unit area has increased by only 10% in the past decade. The elongated internodes of the vines of most cucurbits mean these plants require a large planting area and incur high labour costs. Thus, breeding for compactness represents an efficient strategy to enhance cucurbit production. In this issue of Nature Plants, Wang et al.2 identify a dominant Bush locus — a cucurbit-conserved cis-regulatory element (the B region) in the 5′ untranslated region (UTR) of the YABBY1 transcription factor — that regulates plant architecture. They show the intriguing possibilities of fine-tuning the architectures of cucurbit plants by engineering this locus.

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Fig. 1: Architecture optimization through tailoring stem length in cucurbits.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Key Laboratory of Plant Molecular Genetics, CAS Centre for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academic of Sciences, Shanghai, China

    Nai-Qian Dong & Hong-Xuan Lin

  2. University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China

    Hong-Xuan Lin

  3. School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China

    Hong-Xuan Lin

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  1. Nai-Qian Dong
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  2. Hong-Xuan Lin
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Correspondence to Hong-Xuan Lin.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Dong, NQ., Lin, HX. Compact plants enhance productivity. Nat. Plants 8, 1335–1336 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01311-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01311-x

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