Flowering time control.

A dramatic change in the life cycle of plants is the transition to flowering, which is triggered by both environmental signals, such as temperature and photoperiod, and endogenous stimuli. The dicotyledonous annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana is widely used as a model organism to study how these different signals are integrated into a developmental response. The existence of a diverse collection of Arabidopsis flowering time mutants is particularly useful to understand the genetics of flowering time control. This chapter gives an overview of flowering time analysis, including protocols to measure flowering time in Arabidopsis and wheat. For Arabidopsis, the experimental design necessary to assign flowering time mutants to a specific pathway is described.