Shoot dominance relationships lead to robust reproductive outputs

Abstract

News and Views: Increasing fruit and seed yield is one of the most important aims for crop improvement and expansion of food production. Reproductive development arises from a series of developmental transitions of the shoot meristems, which may activate to produce inflorescences, flowers, and fruits, or arrest at any of these stages. In this issue of Plant Physiology, Walker, Wheeldon, and Bennett have untangled the relationships between different aspects of reproductive architecture and concluded that both Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica napus tend to maintain a consistent number of shoot inflorescences and fruits regardless of developmental trajectory.