Connections between abscission, dehiscence, pathogen defense, drought tolerance, and senescence.

This review focuses on relationships between the abscission process (organ shedding) and other related processes like shattering, senescence, pathogen defense, and drought stress with emphasis on how the relationships might be exploited to advance their respective fields. Shared molecular components provide a means for cross-talk between processes as well as a means for knowledge transfer between fields. The review briefly covers how fundamental abscission molecular mechanisms can be used for crop improvement. We cover seed abscission and shattering in rice, cereals, and beans as well as abscission in Arabidopsis and tomato. The review provides a set of five guidelines that can be used to direct future cell separation research. Finally, we give our perspective on methods and technologies that are likely to advance the abscission field.