Regulation of Plant Development

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the molecular genetic mechanisms governing plant vegetative and reproductive development, focusing on findings in the past 10-15 years. Plants development, including organogenesis, occurs throughout the life with meristems continuing to generate cells for new organs. Moreover, flowering plants have distinct reproductive structures and processes different from other plants, including flowers, double fertilization, and fruits, leading to the great success of angiosperms. In the past decades, rapid progresses have been made with new insights into regulatory mechanisms of plant development using model plants including Arabidopsis and rice. This book brings together contributions from leading experts and synthesizes major advances in root and shoot development, floral induction, gametophyte formation, fertilization, and seed development. It presents cutting-edge discoveries on gene regulatory networks, cellular dynamics, epigenetic control, and environmental adaptation, highlighting the integration of these pathways to shape plant form and productivity.

This book is an authoritative reference for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and scientists in plant biology, crop genetics, and biotechnology. The book also serves as a valuable platform for researchers seeking to understand and engineer key traits in crop species, with its synthesis of developmental mechanisms with resilience under environmental stress, along with knowledge on reproductive regulation and yield-related traits, as a reference for those engaged in genetic improvement and sustainable agriculture.

Dr. Fang Chang is Professor at the School of Life Sciences, Fudan University. She is a recipient of the National Excellent Youth Science Fund and the Wei Zhiming Young Innovator Award from the Chinese Society of Plant Physiology. She serves on multiple national and regional academic committees, including the Women Scientists Committee and the Plant Structure and Reproduction Committee of the Chinese Society of Plant Physiology and Molecular Biology, the Women Scientists Committee of the Chinese Society for Cell Biology, and the councils of the Shanghai Society of Plant Physiology and Molecular Biology and the Shanghai Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her research explores plant reproductive development and environmental adaptation, with a focus on reproductive stem cell fate determination, mechanisms sustaining growth and fertility under stress, and sex determination and directed evolution. Her work has been published in Nature Communications, The Plant Cell, Molecular Plant, and other leading journals.

Dr. Yingxiang Wang is Professor and Dean of the College of Life Sciences at South China Agricultural University, and a recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. He also serves as a principal investigator at the Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture. His research specializes in using model plant Arabidopsis and the crop soybean to investigate the molecular mechanisms of meiotic recombination and its application in breeding, as well as the genetic basis of soybean adaptation to tropical and subtropical climates for new germplasm development. He has published over 80 SCI papers and reviews in prestigious journals including Nature Plants, Nature Communications, The Plant Cell, and PNAS.

Dr. Hong Ma is Professor of Biology and the Huck Endowed Chair in Plant Reproductive Development and Evolution at the Pennsylvania State University. He is a Fellow of AAAS and has served as the President-Elect/President/Immediate Past President of American Society of Plant Biologists from 2023-2026. He has studied plant reproductive development under favorable and stressful conditions using Arabidopsis and rice and a combination of molecular and genomic/transcriptomic approaches, with discoveries of novel genes essential for meiosis and anther development. He has also conducted molecular phylogenetic and evolutionary analyses of large angiosperm families, including Asteraceae, Brassicaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Fabaceae, Orchidaceae, Poaceae, Rosaceae, and Solanaceae, and major angiosperm lineages. He and his collaborators have published >340 scientific articles, including in those in Cell, Nature, Science, Nature Genetics, Molecular Plant, Nature Plant, Nature Communication, The Plant Cell, PNAS, Journal of Integrative Plant Biology, Plant Communication, and Molecular Biology and Evolution.