摘要
Soil salinity is one of the most serious agricultural problems that significantly reduce crop yields in the aridand semi-arid regions. It influences various phases of plant growth and developmental processes, such as seed germina-tion, leaf and stem growth, and reproductive propagation. Salt stress delays the onset of flowering in many plant spe-cies. We have previously reported that the Arabidopsis BROTHER OF FT AND TFL1 （BFT） acts as a floral repressor undersalt stress. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the BFT function in the salt regulation of flowering inductionis unknown. In this work, we found that BFT delays flowering under high salinity by competing with FLOWERING LOCUST （FT） for binding to the FD transcription factor. The flowering time of FD-deficient fd-2 mutant was insensitive to highsalinity. BFT interacts with FD in the nucleus via the C-terminal domain of FD, which is also required for the interactionof FD with FT, and interferes with the FT-FD interaction. These observations indicate that BFT constitutes a distinct saltstress signaling pathway that modulates the function of the FT-FD module and possibly provides an adaptation strategythat fine-tunes photoperiodic flowering under high salinity.
