Open Access

REVIEW

Research Progress and Application of Plant Branching

Yaru Yang¹, Yulan Hu¹, Ping Li¹, John T. Hancock², Xiangyang Hu^1,*
1 Shanghai Key Laboratory of Bio-Energy Crops, School of Life Sciences, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China
2 Department of Applied Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK
* Corresponding Author: Xiangyang Hu. Email:

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2023, 92(3), 679-689. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2023.024904

Received 13 June 2022; Accepted 16 September 2022; Issue published 29 November 2022

Abstract

Plant branching development plays an important role in plant morphogenesis (aboveground plant type), the number and angle of branches are important agronomic characters that determine crop plant type. Effective branches determine the number of panicles or pods of crops and then control the yield of crops. With the rapid development of plant genomics and molecular genetics, great progress has been made in the study of branching development. In recent years, a series of important branching-related genes have been validated from Arabidopsis thaliana, rice, pea, tomato and maize mutants. It is reviewed that plant branching development is controlled by genetic elements and plant hormones, such as auxin, cytokinin and lactones (or lactone derivatives), as well as by environment and genetic elements. Meanwhile, shoot architecture in crop breeding was discussed in order to provide theoretical basis for the study of crop branching regulation.

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Keywords

Plant branching; branching development genes; hormone; environment; crop breeding

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