Plant developmental biology in China: Past, present and future

Plant development is a process from germination of seed to vegetative growth, flower initiation and development, fertilization and finally to the next generation seed formation. A lot of achievements have been obtained in plant developmental biology in China. Since the 1990's, those young generation scientists returned to China from abroad to use molecular and genetic techniques to study morphological, physiological and biochemical process of plant development. The present paper reviews the progress in some research area of plant developmental biology in the past decades and also prospects the chance and future of plant developmental studies, due to the recent advances of plant genome sequencing and functional genomics in China under the international research background.