New techniques could accelerate breeding and innovation

As with most fruit trees, kiwifruit breeding is slow and expensive. In addition to the years it takes to begin flowering and fruit production, mature plants flower and fruit only once per year, require seasonal change and utilise large areas of land.

In this recent study by Plant & Food Research scientists, kiwifruit flowering was accelerated using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated editing of CENTRORADIALIS (CEN) genes, under rigid containment conditions.

This approach turned off these important repressors of flowering and translated into significant changes in growth habit – transforming kiwifruit from a vigorous deciduous climbing plant, which require large areas of land for cultivation, into a compact and continuously flowering evergreen plant with the potential to be grown indoors.

This study could inform the development of new cultivars with greater productivity suitable for indoor farming across a range of geographical and climactic conditions.

Journal Reference:

Erika Varkonyi‐Gasic, Tianchi Wang, Charlotte Voogd, Subin Jeon, Revel S. M. Drummond, Andrew P. Gleave, Andrew C. Allan (2018)  Mutagenesis of kiwifruit CENTRORADIALIS-like genes transforms a climbing woody perennial with long juvenility and axillary flowering into a compact plant with rapid terminal flowering, Plant Biotechnology Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.13021