Control of floral organ abscission in Arabidopsis

The gene INFLORESCENCE DEFICIENT IN ABSCISSION (IDA) gives a strikingfloral abscission phenotype in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana when mutated. Prior to this publication the only Arabidopsis mutants delayed in floral organ abscission that had been characterizedin any detail were the ethylene insensitive mutants etr1 and ein2 in addition to an antisense line of the receptor-like kinase HAESA and anoverexpression line of the MADS-box AGL15. The work presented here suggest that althoughethylene has an important role in regulating the timing of floral organ abscission it is not anessential component of the pathway leading to floral shedding. By performing in depthstudies of the mutant ida we wanted to determine whether a gene that was an essentialcomponent in the regulation of floral abscission was involved in ethylene signaling orperception, and if not what roles it played during the abscission process.