Flowering Time-Regulated Genes in Maize Include the Transcription Factor ZmMADS1.

Flowering time (FTi) control is well examined in the long-day plant Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), and increasing knowledge is available for the short-day plant rice (Oryza sativa). In contrast, little is known in the day-neutral and agronomically important crop plant maize (Zea mays). To learn more about FTi and to identify novel regulators in this species, we first compared the time points of floral transition of almost 30 maize inbred lines and show that tropical lines exhibit a delay in flowering transition of more than 3 weeks under long-day conditions compared with European flint lines adapted to temperate climate zones.

OPTIMAS-DW: a comprehensive transcriptomics, metabolomics, ionomics, proteomics and phenomics data resource for maize.

Background: Maize is a major crop plant, grown for human and animal nutrition, as well as a renewable resource for bioenergy. When looking at the problems of limited fossil fuels, the growth of the world's population or the world's climate change, it is important to find ways to increase the yield and biomass of maize and to study how it reacts to specific abiotic and biotic stress situations. Within the OPTIMAS systems biology project maize plants were grown under a large set of controlled stress conditions, phenotypically characterised and plant material was harvested to analyse the effect of specific environmental conditions or developmental stages.