Molecular mechanisms regulating yield and yield stability in plants 

Securing food reserves for the growing world population will require inputs from various disciplines including plant biology, plant breeding, plant biotechnology, agricultural industries as well as farming. In the absence of a precise knowledge about the underlying molecular mechanisms, progress in crop breeding and production will be difficult to achieve and the transfer of knowledge from model plants to crop plants or from one crop plant to another crop plant will not be obvious.
  
The SFB924 brings together experts from different fields of plant biology such as plant reproduction biology, hormone biology, stress physiology, phytopathology and plant breeding that make use of high throughput technologies supported by bioinformatics to resolve the molecular mechanisms that regulate yield and yield stability in plants. Research of the participating groups focusses on processes that regulate reproductive success as well as quantitative and qualitative aspects of seed formation (yield regulation). A second project area concentrates on the molecular mechanisms that govern the interactions of plants with their abiotic and biotic environment (yield stability).
   
Transferability is the guiding principle of the research within the proposed SFB 924, which implies (1) that the knowledge about a specific molecular mechanism can be transferred from one species to another, (2) that the same molecular mechanisms may regulate different biological processes, and (3) that related signalling components may use similar regulatory mechanisms to regulate distinct processes in growth and development. Through synergistic interactions between individual groups and projects, the SFB will make significant contributions to the field and have a strong impact on knowledge-based plant breeding programs and plant biotechnology as well as on the education of the next generation of plant biologists.