Skip to main content
Canna~Fangled Abstracts

Non-photoperiodic transition of female cannabis seedlings from juvenile to adult reproductive stage

By September 5, 2022No Comments

. 2022 Sep 5.

doi: 10.1007/s00497-022-00449-0.

Online ahead of print.
Ben Spitzer-Rimon 1, Hadas Shafran-Tomer 2, Gilad H Gottlieb 2, Adi Doron-Faigenboim 2, Hanita Zemach 2, Rina Kamenetsky-Goldstein # 2, Moshe Flaishman # 2
Affiliations 

Abstract

Vegetative-to-reproductive phase transition in female cannabis seedlings occurs autonomously with the de novo development of single flowers. To ensure successful sexual reproduction, many plant species originating from seedlings undergo juvenile-to-adult transition. This phase transition precedes and enables the vegetative-to-reproductive shift in plants, upon perception of internal and/or external signals such as temperature, photoperiod, metabolite levels, and phytohormones. This study demonstrates that the juvenile seedlings of cannabis gradually shift to the adult vegetative stage, as confirmed by the formation of lobed leaves, and upregulation of the phase-transition genes. In the tested cultivar, the switch to the reproductive stage occurs with the development of a pair of single flowers in the 7th node. Histological analysis indicated that transition to the reproductive stage is accomplished by the de novo establishment of new flower meristems which are not present in a vegetative stage, or as dormant meristems at nodes 4 and 6. Moreover, there were dramatic changes in the transcriptomic profile of flowering-related genes among nodes 4, 6, and 7. Downregulation of flowering repressors and an intense increase in the transcription of phase transition-related genes occur in parallel with an increase in the transcription of flowering integrators and meristem identity genes. These results support and provide molecular evidence for previous findings that cannabis possesses an autonomous flowering mechanism and the transition to reproductive phase is controlled in this plant mainly by internal signals.

Keywords: Adult, Cannabis sativa, Floral meristem, Vegetative

References

    1. Abe M, Kobayashi Y, Yamamoto S et al (2005) FD, a bZIP protein mediating signals from the floral pathway integrator FT at the shoot apex. Science 309:1052–1056. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1115983 – DOI – PubMed
    1. Abe M, Kosaka S, Shibuta M et al (2019) Transient activity of the florigen complex during the floral transition in Arabidopsis thaliana. Development 146(7):dev171504. https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.171504 – DOI – PubMed
    1. Andre CM, Hausman JF, Guerriero G (2016) Cannabis sativa: the plant of the thousand and one molecules. Front Plant Sci. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2016.00019 – DOI – PubMed – PMC
    1. Anwar N, Ohta M, Yazawa T, Sato Y, Li C, Tagiri A (2018) miR172 downregulates the translation of cleistogamy 1 in barley. Ann Bot 122:251–265. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcy1058 – DOI – PubMed – PMC
    1. Aukerman MJ, Sakai H (2003) Regulation of flowering time and floral organ identity by a microRNA and its APETALA2-LIKE target genes. Plant Cell 15:2730–2741. https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.016238 – DOI – PubMed – PMC

Leave a Reply