Hydrangea [Hydrangea macrophylla (Thunb.) Ser.] is a high aluminum-tolerant ornamental plant species, which has a specific characteristic of color change, ie. some cultivars' floral color will change from red to blue or blue-violet planted in acidic soil containing aluminum.

The scientists of the Institute of Leisure Agriculture have been devoted to the research of hydrangea resource collection, evaluation and analysis of the formation mechanism of important traits. Important research progress has been made, with 3 articles respectively published in Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, PeerJ and BMC Plant Biology.

Figure: Phylogenetic analysis of ALMTs from hydrangea, Arabidopsis thaliana, Apostasia shenzhenica, Erythranthe guttata, Nicotiana tabacum and Rosa chinensis using the complete protein sequences.

To read the 3 articles:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0981942822002807

https://peerj.com/articles/13620/

https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-022-03727-1