Plant reproduction articles from across Nature Portfolio

Maternal inheritance of mitochondria breaks down in the cold when a mitochondrial DNA degrading nuclease is defective, resulting in biparental inheritance that can rescue mitochondrial mutations and generate novel mitochondrial genotypes.

The authors developed self-incompatible diploid potatoes via haploid breeding. The resulting F₁ hybrids prevent fruit set, redirect photoassimilates to tubers, increase the harvest index and enable scalable hybrid seed production.

Micromitophagy is found to occur in plant male germline cells, mediated by ATG5–HSP90.2 signalling, and is evolutionarily conserved in angiosperms. This mechanism underpins paternal mitochondrial elimination and supports the zygote-to-embryo transition.

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria offer a promising route to reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers, but their effectiveness is hindered by environmental stresses that limit survival on leaf surfaces. This study introduces a nanocoating strategy that enables robust foliar colonization of Klebsiella variicola, enhancing nitrogen fixation and improving rice yield under low-fertilizer conditions.

Potato is clonally propagated, with a complex genome and a challenging breeding system. Genome-enabled approaches have shed light on the molecular genetic basis of key traits, thereby enabling accelerated breeding strategies and bringing potato in line with other key food crops such as maize and rice that exploit heterosis.

The florigen activation complex drives the pivotal transition from vegetative growth to flowering in response to inductive daylengths. Recent work, which incorporates novel components and reveals the multifunctionality of established members of the complex, now uncovers a multi-layered assembly mechanism and an unexpected spatiotemporal distribution of the complex.

A ubiquitous protein kinase phosphorylates and stabilizes a key epigenetic effector in Arabidopsis, potentially contributing to mechanisms in plants for timing the duration of winter.

Growth-derived mechanical conflicts between tissues are crucial during plant organogenesis. In-depth 3D growth analysis combined with genetics and mechanical modelling reveal that rapid and localized cell growth in the inner tissue drives the formation of the complex 3D shape of the anther during development.

Identification of NERD-interacting proteins reveals a role for this protein in N⁶-methyladenosine deposition at the FLC locus to regulate flowering time.

The ovule nucellus generates and then nurtures the female germline until maturity, preparing it for fertilization and seed development. We reveal that a B-sister MADS-box transcription factor, MADS31, is expressed in the inner subdomain of the nucellus and sustains germline development by preventing expression of post-fertilization genes.