GmFT3a fine-tunes flowering time and improves adaptation of soybean to higher latitudes

• Published in: Frontiers in plant science Vol. 13; p. 929747
• Main Authors: Yuan, Shan, Wang, Yining, Wang, Junya, Zhang, Chunlei, Zhang, Lixin, Jiang, Bingjun, Wu, Tingting, Chen, Li, Xu, Xin, Cai, Yupeng, Sun, Shi, Chen, Fulu, Song, Wenwen, Wu, Cunxiang, Hou, Wensheng, Yu, Lijie, Han, Tianfu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 25.07.2022
• Subjects: adaptation; flowering time; GmFT3a; photoperiod; Plant Science; soybean; soybean; adaptation; GmFT3a; photoperiod; flowering time
• ISSN: 1664-462X; 1664-462X
• DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2022.929747

Onset of flowering of plants is precisely controlled by extensive environmental factors and internal molecular networks, in which ( ) is a key flowering integrator. In soybean, a typical short-day plant, 11 homologues are found in its genome, of which several homologues are functionally diversified in flowering pathways and the others including are yet unknown. In the current study, we characterized , which is located on the same chromosome as the flowering promoters and . Overexpression of significantly promoted flowering of Arabidopsis under the inductive long-day (LD) photoperiod. over-expressed soybean also flowered earlier than the control under LD, but they were not significantly different under inductive short-day (SD) conditions, indicating that acts as a flowering promoter in the non-inductive photoperiod in soybean. Compared with other homologues, exhibited a slighter effect in flowering promotion than , and under LD conditions. promoted flowering by regulating the expression of downstream flowering-related genes and also affected the expression of other . According to the re-sequencing data, the regional distributions of two major haplotypes in 176 soybean varieties were analyzed. The varieties with -Hap2 haplotype matured relatively early, and relative higher expression of was detected in early maturing varieties, implying that Hap2 variation may contribute to the adaptation of soybean to higher latitude regions by increasing expression level of genes in metabolism and signaling pathways. The early flowering germplasm generated by overexpression of has potential to be planted at higher latitudes where non-inductive long day is dominant in the growing season, and can be used to fine-tune soybean flowering and maturity time and improve the geographical adaptation.