Loss-of-function of gynoecium-expressed phospholipase pPLAII? triggers maternal haploid induction in Arabidopsis

Production of in planta haploid embryos that inherit chromosomes from only one parent can greatly increase breeding efficiency via quickly generating homozygous plants, called doubled haploid. One of the main players of in planta haploid induction is a pollen-specific phospholipase A, which is able, when mutated, to induce in vivo haploid induction in numerous monocots. However, no functional orthologous gene has been identified in dicots plants.Here, we show that loss-of-function of gynoecium-expressed phospholipase AII (pPLAII?) triggers maternal haploid plants in Arabidopsis, at an average rate of 1.07%. Reciprocal crosses demonstrate that haploid plants are triggered from the female side and not from the pollen, and the haploid plants carry the maternal genome.Promoter activity of pPLAII? shows enriched expression in the funiculus of flower development stages 13 and 18, and pPLAII? fused to yellow fluorescent protein reveals a plasma-membrane localizationInterestingly, the polar localized PIN1 at the basal plasma membrane of the funiculus was all internalized in pplaII? mutants, suggesting that altered PIN1 localization in female organ could play a role in maternal haploid induction.