Meetings of the Royal Botanical Society of The Netherlands

Gibberellins (GAs) are endogenous plant growth regulators that are involved in the regulation of many aspects of plant growth and development, including seed germination, extension growth and flowering. An approach to understand GA action is to isolate genes which are regulated by GAs and use these genes as molecular markers for GA response and to determine the molecules involved in GA regulation. We are investigating the role of GA in the promotion of anther development in the gib-1 mutant of tomato. The phenotype of this GA deficient mutant includes dwarfism, failure to germinate and failure to flower normally. However, normal (wild-type) development can be restored by exogenously applied GAs. During flower development the anthers become developmentally arrested and are responsive to a single gibberellic acid (GA3) treatment. The developmental arrest occurs during the stage that the pollen mother cells are in the G, phase of the premeiotic interphase (Jacobsen & Olszewski, 1991, Plant Physiol. 97; 409-414).