Exploring nitrogen remobilization for seed filling using natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana

What is it about?

Natural variation was explored in order to analyse the variability of agronomical traits in Arabidopsis and to investigate effects of environemental conditions and genetic bases. Thanks to this study we established and improved a procedure to monitor nitrogen remobilization efficiency in different Arabidopsis genotypes and to determine accurately yield and nitrogen harvest index.

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Why is it important?

This study revealed that globally nitrogen remobilization is more performant in Arabidopsis when nitrate supply is limiting. It shows also that genotypes that are better in N remobilization are also better for yield. Changing plant nitrogen regime moderately modify seed nitrogen concentration, but strongly impact on the amount of residual nitrogen lost in the dry remains. This study then shows that Arabidopsis is a good model to determine how the N and yield traits are correlated and how genetic variation can be used to identify genes of interest.