I did not anticipate quite how similar bud activation in these two species would be.
- Ottoline Leyser
Willows grow fast, produce high yields, need little fertilizer and easily re-grow after being coppiced, or cut back - qualities which make willow hugely important for commercial use as renewable and sustainable biomass for bioenergy.
‘Coppicing response’ - the rate and type of new growth following cut back - is critical to these energy crops as it enables willows to be grown in three year harvesting cycles, affects vigour and yield, along with the ratio of bark to wood in the stem.
Despite its importance, the genetic regulation of coppicing response is little understood. Now, a team of plant scientists from the Sainsbury Laboratory, in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, have used knowledge and methodologies from the model plant species Arabidopsis to identify SxMAX4 as the first coppicing response gene known to date.
The study was funded by the BBSRC Crop Science Initiative, and is published in the Plant Biotechnology Journal.
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Image: Willow trees in bud
Credit: Lawrence Weston
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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