Application of gene expression analyses to studies of general flowering

General flowering is a community-level mass flowering observed at irregular intervals of less than one year to 10 years in South-East Asian tropical rainforests. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the mechanism of general flowering, but it is still not clear how many triggers can induce general flowering and whether sensitivities to the trigger(s) are variable in different populations. To answer these questions, we review a method integrating gene expression data into environmental and endogenous data. Our study suggests that the function of the FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) gene is conserved as a floral activator in dipterocarps, which makes it possible to detect the precise timing of flower induction from the expression of the FT homologues in dipterocarps. Combined with the environmental and endogenous data during flower induction, this method has the potential to become a powerful tool to identify the trigger(s) of general flowering. We also discuss the future application of this method to well-planned seed collection strategies for forest restoration.