Vascular tissues generate almost all of the tissues that make up wood in trees, are crucial for source-to-sink transport throughout the plant and make up many edible structures such as fruits, roots and tubers. Moreover, the plant vascular system is vital for transport of water, sugars and nutrients throughout the plant body. Therefore, targeted engineering vascular tissues holds great potential for improving plant biomass and productivity.
A main goal and deliverable of the PIPELINES project is the identification and functional characterization of conserved regulators of vascular and conductive tissue development. Exactly because the project aims to identify highly conserved factors, these are much more likely to have a preserved function across plant species. Thus, compared to other selection procedures, the factors identified in this research proposal are more likely to be translatable to crop species. As factors controlling proliferation, identify and differentiation will be identified; subsets of these factors can be combined to modulate the vascular phenotype in space and time depending on the specific needs for each crop species. Applications emerging from this project are not limited to the topics mentioned above, but increased vascular tissue content in crop species can improve source to sink transport, biomass production to sequester atmospheric CO2, plant characteristics for producing bio-fuels or increase energy production by combustion of post-harvest waste. Additionally, modulating xylem cell characteristics (number and size) have been shown to assist plants in coping with drought and other stresses. As such, vascular characteristics are promising, yet underutilised, targets for crop breeding or editing efforts.
