Abstract
Gentian plants are a perennial plant. And they are popular ornamental flowers used as a cut flower or potted plant. In gentian cultivation, the flowering season of cultivars is short and is fixed. For that reason, it is required for the technique for the flowering control. However, the flowering initiation in gentian has not been studied. To identify the flower initiation in gentian, we analyzed the FT /TFL1 gene family which acts flower initiation in other plants. We performed degenerate RT-PCR with degenerate primers derived from the conserved regions. Three genes were obtained in this experiment and were named GtFT, GtTSF and GtTFL1, respectively. The seasonal expressions of these genes in leaves were analyzed by realtime RT-PCR. The expression of GtFT gene was remarkably increased at the flowering initiation. The expression of GtTSF and GtTFL1 were not altered compared with GtFT expression. This result suggested that GtFT might play a role in flowering initiation in gentian as well as other plants. To determine the function of these genes, we introduced each gene into gentian and Arabidopsis. We are planning to report on the result of transformants analysis.
