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Abstract

Nitrogen (N) is an essential nutrient for plants, typically representing 2-5% of the plant dry weight. The N supply often limits plant growth and development. Next to developmental processes like germination, shoot-root allocation, lateral root growth, senescence, the concentration of nitrate as the major source of N in the soil has been known for almost a century to modify the timing of flowering in plants. Marin and coworkers suggested in a recent publication that N influences flowering via a novel signaling pathway that includes nitrate or a substance that is metabolized from nitrate (Marin et al., 2011). At which point the N signal, which is thought to act in a separate pathway, interacts with the known floral induction pathways is not known to date. In the work presented here, we aim at getting a better insight into how the N signal is to be integrated into the existing flowering network.