Methods and materials for modulating heat and/or drought tolerance in plants are disclosed. For example, nucleic acids encoding heat and/or drought-tolerance polypeptides are disclosed as well as methods for using such nucleic acids to transform plant cells. Also disclosed are plants having increased heat and/or drought tolerance and plant products produced from plants having increased heat and/or drought tolerance.

The present invention provides a new plant gene-rice high temperature resistance 1 gene (Rice High Temperature Resistance 1, HTR1) and encoded protein thereof. Also disclosed is the use of the high temperature resistance gene, especially for the enhancement of high-temperature resistance of plants in plant variety improvement and cross breeding.

Isolated polynucleotides and polypeptides encoded thereby are described, together with the use of those products for making transgenic plants with increased tolerance to abiotic stress (e.g., high or low temperature, drought, flood).

Provided herein is a method for improving growth, stress tolerance and productivity of a plant. Also provided herein is a method for increasing seed quality of a plant. Specifically, the disclosure provides a method for improving growth, stress tolerance and productivity of a plant, comprising: providing a transgenic plant, which includes a reduced expression on an MYBS2 gene as relative to its wild-type counterpart; and a method for increasing seed quality of a plant, comprising: providing a seed from a transgenic plant, which overexpresses a full-length MYBS2 gene or a mutant MYBS2 gene as relative to its wild-type counterpart.

The invention relates to novel maize plants, seeds and compositions, as well as improvements to maize plant breeding and methods for creating modifications in maize plant genomes.

The invention relates to plant transcription factor polypeptides, polynucleotides that encode them, homologs from a variety of plant species, and methods of using the polynucleotides and polypeptides to produce transgenic plants having advantageous properties compared to a reference plant. Sequence information related to these polynucleotides and polypeptides can also be used in bioinformatic search methods and is also disclosed.

Provided are isolated polypeptides, isolated polynucleotides encoding same, nucleic acid constructs comprising same, transgenic cells expressing same, transgenic plants expressing same and method of using same for increasing yield, abiotic stress tolerance, growth rate, biomass, vigor, oil content, photosynthetic capacity, seed yield, fiber yield, fiber quality, fiber length, early flowering, grain filling period, harvest index, plant height, and/or nitrogen use efficiency of a plant.

The present invention relates to plants, particularly to crop plants including plants of the family Solanaceae having reduced expression and/or activity of Sl ROP9 protein or homologs thereof, displaying increased water use efficiency (WUE) and enhanced tolerance to drought and/or salt stress, with minimal effect on the crop yield.

This invention relates to compositions and methods for modifying root architecture in a plant through modification of an endogenous Ser-Thr protein kinase gene, such as endogenous PHOSPHOROUS STARVATION TOLERANCE 1 (PSTOL1) nucleic acids. The invention further relates to plants produced using the methods and compositions of the invention.

The invention provides a compositions and methods for controlling phenotypic traits in plants. Genes of interest are placed under the control of a gene switch to allow inducible control or expression of a gene of interest “on-demand” by treatment of the plant with a chemical ligand.