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Woody perennials including Populus spp.(poplars) have a juvenile phase that ranges from several years to decades in length. This and the year-long floral development process are major impediments to breeding and to fundamental research of reproductive traits. Here, we report a CRISPR-empowered in vitro flowering system and demonstrate its application using three reproductive traits: sex, seed trichomes, and a previously undescribed potential for trimonoecy in poplar.

Several regulators of floral development, such as LEAFY (LFY) and FLOWERING LOCUS-T (FT), have been used to induce precocious flowering in annual models and fruit trees (Weigel & Nilsson, 1995; Callahan et al., 2016). Translating these findings into the poplar system has met with various challenges, including dwarfism and sterility (Zhang et al., 2010). Using heat-inducible promoters for FT expression has circumvented many of the …