The final morphology of a plant is determined by the activity of two poles of growth that form early during embryogenesis, the root meristem (RAM) and the shoot meristem (SAM). The determination of all the aerial organs, and ultimately of the whole plant architecture, depends on the SAM. The shoot apical meristem is a small group of cells at the shoot apex characterized by a central zone with pluripotent slow dividing cells that is important for meristem maintenance (stem cells), and a ...

Plants, as sessile organisms, have evolved complex strategies to cope with adverse environmental conditions. However, crop species have been selected for centuries by humans for traits such as yield and organoleptic features. This selection has been carried out to detriment of other traits, such as the ability to grow under limiting conditions or to resist to pathogen attack. This phenomenon causes severe damages in agriculture, both as yield loss and as deterioration of food-stuffs and harvest ...

Plants have great potentials as bioreactors for the production of pharmaceutical proteins. For safety, product quality, and costs plants have important advantages compared to animals and microorganisms (fungi and bacteria): plants are not infected by human pathogenic viruses, perform protein synthesis and modifications more similarly to mammals than to microorganisms and have maintenance costs much lower than those of transgenic animals, animal cell cultures or bacteria and yeast ...

The modern pig industry relies on a relatively limited number of breeds, common to all countries, which are used in the framework of highly integrated breeding schemes. The evolution of improved pig populations over the last decades has brought some performances close to their biological or economic optimum, thus reducing their future importance in the breeding objectives. Consequently, traits as meat and fat quality, reproductive fitness, mothering abilities, adaptation to extensive ...