Discrimination of relatedness drives rice flowering and reproduction in cultivar mixtures

The improvement of performance and yield in both cultivar and species mixtures has been well established. Despite the clear benefits of crop mixtures to agriculture, identifying the critical mechanisms behind performance increases are largely lacking. We experimentally demonstrated that the benefits of rice cultivar mixtures were linked to relatedness-mediated intraspecific neighbour recognition and discrimination under both field and controlled conditions. We then tested biochemical mechanisms of responses in incubation experiments involving the addition of root exudates and a root-secreted signal, (-)-loliolide, followed by transcriptome analysis. We found that closely related cultivar mixtures increased grain yields by modifying root behaviour and accelerating flowering over distantly related mixtures. Importantly, these responses were accompanied by altered concentration of signalling (-)-loliolide that affected rice transcriptome profiling, directly regulating root growth and flowering gene expression. These findings suggest that beneficial crop combinations may be generated a-priori by manipulating neighbour genetic relatedness in rice cultivar mixtures and that root-secreted (-)-loliolide functions as a key mediator of genetic relatedness interactions. The ability of relatedness discrimination to regulate rice flowering and yield raises an intriguing possibility to increase crop production.

Unique Jurassic Ovaries Shed a New Light on the Nature of Carpels

Enclosed ovules are a reproductive feature restricted to angiosperms. Although this feature can be used as a criterion for identifying fossil angiosperms, how ovules are enclosed and the nature of the placenta are still foci of debates. A reason underlying these controversies is the lack of reproductive organ fossils shedding light on these issues. These controversies hinder a clear understanding of angiosperm evolution and systematics. Here, we report a new fossil ovary, Xenofructus dabuensis gen. et sp. nov, from the Middle Jurassic of Liaoning, China. Our fossil clearly demonstrates the existence of ovules in Xenofructus that has a free central placentation. This new feature implies that a placenta in angiosperm gynoecia is homologous to an ovule/seed-bearing axis, and free central placentation is one of the early developed placentations. This discovery is apparently at odds with the current understanding of placentation and its evolution. Apparently, the understanding of angiosperms and their gynoecia should be updated with newly available palaeobotanical data.

Kin Recognition in an Herbicide-Resistant Barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli L.) Biotype

Despite increasing evidence of kin recognition in natural and crop plants, there is a lack of knowledge of kin recognition in herbicide-resistant weeds that are escalating in cropping systems. Here, we identified a penoxsulam-resistant barnyardgrass biotype with the ability for kin recognition from two biotypes of penoxsulam-susceptible barnyardgrass and normal barnyardgrass at different levels of relatedness. When grown with closely related penoxsulam-susceptible barnyardgrass, penoxsulam-resistant barnyardgrass reduced root growth and distribution, lowering belowground competition, and advanced flowering and increased seed production, enhancing reproductive effectiveness. However, such kin recognition responses were not occurred in the presence of distantly related normal barnyardgrass. Root segregation, soil activated carbon amendment, and root exudates incubation indicated chemically-mediated kin recognition among barnyardgrass biotypes. Interestingly, penoxsulam-resistant barnyardgrass significantly reduced a putative signaling (-)-loliolide production in the presence of closely related biotype but increased production when growing with distantly related biotype and more distantly related interspecific allelopathic rice cultivar. Importantly, genetically identical penoxsulam-resistant and -susceptible barnyardgrass biotypes synergistically interact to influence the action of allelopathic rice cultivar. Therefore, kin recognition in plants could also occur at the herbicide-resistant barnyardgrass biotype level, and intraspecific kin recognition may facilitate cooperation between genetically related biotypes to compete with interspecific rice, offering many potential implications and applications in paddy systems.