Reviewing research priorities in weed ecology, evolution and management: a horizon scan.

Weedy plants pose a major threat to food security, biodiversity, ecosystem services and consequently to human health and wellbeing. However, many currently used weed management approaches are increasingly unsustainable. To address this knowledge and practice gap, in June 2014, 35 weed and invasion ecologists, weed scientists, evolutionary biologists and social scientists convened a workshop to explore current and future perspectives and approaches in weed ecology and management. A horizon scanning exercise ranked a list of 124 pre-submitted questions to identify a priority list of 30 questions. These questions are discussed under seven themed headings that represent areas for renewed and emerging focus for the disciplines of weed research and practice. The themed areas considered the need for transdisciplinarity, increased adoption of integrated weed management and agroecological approaches, better understanding of weed evolution, climate change, weed invasiveness and finally, disciplinary challenges for weed science. Almost all the challenges identified rested on the need for continued efforts to diversify and integrate agroecological, socio-economic and technological approaches in weed management. These challenges are not newly conceived, though their continued prominence as research priorities highlights an ongoing intransigence that must be addressed through a more system-oriented and transdisciplinary research agenda that seeks an embedded integration of public and private research approaches. This horizon scanning exercise thus set out the building blocks needed for future weed management research and practice; however, the challenge ahead is to identify effective ways in which sufficient research and implementation efforts can be directed towards these needs.

Gene expression related to seed shattering and the cell wall in cultivated and weedy rice.

Seed shattering is an evolutionary trait that is essential to the survival of wild and weedy rice. Discovery of the qSH1 gene in rice subspecies Japonica and Sh4 in the rice subspecies Indica indicated the possibility that seed shattering is governed by major genes in a qualitative manner. However, observation of the large variability of seed shattering in weedy rice has led us to hypothesise that other genes related to abscission layer integrity could also be important in the regulation of seed shattering in rice. Gene expression 10 days after pollination and nucleotide composition revealed that qSH1 and Sh4 that are described as major players in seed shattering were not important in weedy rice. High expression of the gene OsCPL1 was positively associated with the occurrence of high seed shattering in weedy rice, which did not concur in previous studies of cultivated rice. This result is related to the absence of four SNPs and an indel in the OsCPL1 gene in weedy rice that are related to seed shattering in previous studies. Analysis of the expression of six genes related to cell wall synthesis/degradation revealed the importance of the genes OsXTH8 and OsCel9D in seed shattering in weedy rice. Therefore, in addition to qSH1 and Sh4, the genes OsCPL1, OsXTH8 and OsCel9D should be considered in studies of rice evolution and in the development of mitigation approaches of gene flow in transgenic rice.