27 September 2025
Kumari Billakurthi - Plant Physiology, 2025
Leaves of land plants play a critical role in sustaining life on Earth by contributing to food production and replenishing oxygen in our atmosphere. Through photosynthesis, leaves fix atmospheric carbon dioxide into organic compounds, including sugars, and release oxygen. Leaves also release water vapor into the atmosphere through transpiration. Leaf morphology varies greatly across plant species (Runions et al. 2017), influencing total leaf area, photosynthetic efficiency, and transpiration rates (Vuolo et al. 2016). Moreover, in leafy vegetables, leaf shape significantly affects texture, taste, and attractiveness, thereby influencing consumer preferences and market value (Souza et al. 2021). Brassica campestris, commonly known as turnip, is a widely cultivated leafy vegetable that exhibits considerable variation in leaf morphology, including flat and wrinkled leaf types. Turnip thus is a good model species for investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the leaf shape diversity. Importantly, the degree of leaf wrinkling is a key trait used to classify B. campestris varieties. However, the molecular basis of this important trait has remained largely unexplored.
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