Flower development in Nicotiana tabacum

The production of biomass is one of the most important aims of modern biotechnology. Plants which grow prodigiously and continuously could be the key for a sustainable and efficient supply of food and raw materials for the world population. Some years ago in a T-DNA tagging experiment; we serendipitously identified a tobacco mutant – which we called Forever Young Tobacco (FYT) – that showed permanent growth, no senescence, evergreen leaves and no flowering. At present, we study the initiation of flowering in N. tabacum by functional genomics.