Secondary growth in the tomato stem is suppressed by the flowering regulators FUL2 and STM3

FUL2 and STM3 repress secondary growth in tomato stems, and ful2 or stm3 knock-out mutants show strongly increased secondary growth in older stems.

• Why it matters: Secondary xylem formation must be coordinated with the vegetative-to-flowering transition, but the tissue-specific regulators controlling tomato stem secondary growth were unclear.
• What they did: Using laser capture microdissection RNA-seq, the study profiled xylem and other tissues, then tested function with ful2 and stm3 knock-out mutants and a double mutant.
• The result: FUL2 and STM3 are expressed in xylem, physically interact, and together repress distinct NAC and MYB candidate regulators in a stage- and position-dependent manner, limiting secondary xylem accumulation during stem development.

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