The Strigolactone Pathway Is a Target for Modifying Crop Shoot Architecture and Yield

Plants have developed the remarkable ability to sense their environment and modify their growth to suit changing conditions. This ability is integral for their survival and is facilitated by a range of plant hormones. Strigolactones (SLs) are one type of hormone that play an important role in plant growth response, where they are a key regulator of lateral branching. When growing conditions become poor, the production of SL increases, which reduces the number of branches a plant can make. Although this response may increase a plant’s chances of survival in the wild, it can have the unwanted effect of decreasing crop yield as the number of seed heads on a plant becomes reduced. It has been discovered that natural variations in the SL hormone pathway have been responsible for yield increases in staple crop varieties, such as rice and maize. We propose that new knowledge of the SL pathway and its effect on crop development can be applied using new technologies to develop crop lines with varied SL function, which may aid us in improving crop shoot architecture and yield across varying environments.