Poster: Reproductive Development
Abs #
486: Early flower development of wild tomato (Lycopersicon pimpinellifolium)
Compared to the small and spherical fruit of wild progenitors such as LA1589 (L. pimpinellifolium), cultivated tomato (L. esculentum) fruits display abundant variation in size and shape. To better understand these variations, we’ve begun to introgress some of the fruit morphology loci from LA1589 into cultivated tomato. The nearly isogenic lines created will provide the basis for a developmental study on the ontology of tomato fruit morphology variation. Towards that goal, this study was conducted to characterize in detail the early flower development of LA1589. Understanding early development of the ovary, associated flower parts, and developing fruit is critical for determining when fruit morphology changes occur. LA1589 inflorescences were examined using scanning electron and light microscopy. Flower development was divided into stages using position of the bud along the inflorescence, size, and a defining event. Defining events of early stages included the floral apex arising, the formation of floral primordium, appearance of sepal primordia, sepals enclosing the bud, petal primordia arising, stamen primordia arising, and finally carpel primordia arising. Defining events of later stages consisted primarily of further development of organs, such as enlargement and elongation of the calyx and corolla, formation of anther lobes and pollen in stamen development, and the formation of locules, ovary, ovules, style, and stigma in carpel development. This is the first reported organization of wild tomato flower development into distinct stages, and will facilitate research of developmental processes controlling ovary and fruit growth and maturation.
This work is supported by NSF DBI 0227541.
