Plant Growth Beyond Limits

Growth processes, governed by complex genetic networks in a coordinated manner, are determining factors for numerous crop traits. Many components of these networks, described in Arabidopsis and to a lesser extent in crops, enhance organ growth when perturbed. However, translating our understanding of plant growth into crop improvement has been very limited. We argue here that this lack of success is due to the fact that modifying the expression of single genes in a complex growth regulatory network might be buffered by other components of the network. We discuss the observation that simultaneous perturbations of multiple genes have more pronounced effects, and present novel perspectives to use knowledge of growth regulatory networks to enhance crop yield in a targeted manner.