Heritability of temperature-mediated flower size plasticity in Arabidopsis thaliana

Phenotypic plasticity is a heritable trait that provides sessile organisms a strategy to rapidly mitigate negative effects of environmental change. Yet, we have little understanding of the mode of inheritance and genetic architecture of plasticity in different focal traits relevant to agricultural applications. This study builds on our recent discovery of genes controlling temperature-mediated flower size plasticity in Arabidopsis thaliana and focuses on dissecting the mode of inheritance and combining ability of plasticity in the context of plant breeding. We created a full diallel cross using 12 A. thaliana accessions displaying different temperature-mediated flower size plasticities, scored as the fold change between two temperatures. Griffing’s analysis of variance in flower size plasticity indicated that non-additive genetic action shapes this trait and pointed at challenges and opportunities when breeding for reduced plasticity. Our findings provide an outlook of flower size plasticity that is important for developing resilient crops for future climates.