Soybean is a major legume crop originating in temperate regions, and photoperiod responsiveness is a key factor in its latitudinal adaptation. Varieties from temperate regions introduced to lower latitudes mature early and have extremely low grain yields. Introduction of the long-juvenile (LJ) trait extends the vegetative phase and improves yield under short-day conditions, thereby enabling expansion of cultivation in tropical regions. Here we report the cloning and characterization of J, the major classical locus conferring the LJ trait, and identify J as the ortholog of Arabidopsis thaliana EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3). J depends genetically on the legume-specific flowering repressor E1, and J protein physically associates with the E1 promoter to downregulate its transcription, relieving repression of two important FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) genes and promoting flowering under short days. Our findings identify an important new component in flowering-time control in soybean and provide new insight into soybean adaptation to tropical regions.

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The model plants Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and rice (Oryza sativa) have provided a wealth of information about genes and genetic pathways controlling the flowering process, but little is known about the corresponding pathways in legumes. The garden pea (Pisum sativum) has been used for several decades as a model system for physiological genetics of flowering, but the lack of molecular information about pea flowering genes has prevented direct comparison with other systems. To address this problem, we have searched expressed sequence tag and genome sequence databases to identify flowering-gene-related sequences from Medicago truncatula, soybean (Glycine max), and Lotus japonicus, and isolated corresponding sequences from pea by degenerate-primer polymerase chain reaction and library screening. We found that the majority of Arabidopsis flowering genes are represented in pea and in legume sequence databases, although several gene families, including the MADS-box, CONSTANS, and FLOWERING LOCUS T/TERMINAL FLOWER1 families, appear to have undergone differential expansion, and several important Arabidopsis genes, including FRIGIDA and members of the FLOWERING LOCUS C clade, are conspicuously absent. In several cases, pea and Medicago orthologs are shown to map to conserved map positions, emphasizing the closely syntenic relationship between these two species. These results demonstrate the potential benefit of parallel model systems for an understanding of flowering phenology in crop and model legume species.The change from vegetative to reproductive growth is a critical developmental transition in the life of a plant, and the induction, expression, and maintenance of the flowering state are regulated by many external and endogenous factors. A vast number of applied and fundamental studies have demonstrated the importance of light (through daylength and light-quality effects) and temperature (through vernalization and ambient temperature effects) as the main environmental regulators of flowering. However, other factors, including nutrient status, endogenous hormones, stress, and the developmental state of the plant, can also be important. Even with respect to light and temperature, great diversity in responsiveness exists within and between different plant species. These differences are important in the adaptation of species to particular latitudinal and climatic regions, and have also been extremely important for determining the environments and agronomic regimes under which crop species can be most effectively grown.The flowering process has been subject to detailed genetic analysis in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). As a small, weedy annual, Arabidopsis is responsive to a wide range of factors and has been invaluable in outlining the major genetic pathways that are likely to function in the control of flowering responses to photoperiod, vernalization, and hormone responses (Amasino, 2004;Boss et al., 2004;Putterill et al., 2004). It is likely that many of the genetic mechanisms discovered in Arabidopsis ...