On the universal Gröbner bases of varieties of minimal degree (Q1000634)

\textit{R. L. Graham, P. Diaconis} and \textit{B. Sturmfels} [Bolyai Soc. Math. Stud. 2, 173--192 (1996; Zbl 0852.05014)] give a combinatorial description of the Graver basis for any rational normal curve in terms of primitive partition identities. Their result is extended by the author to rational normal scrolls. The description of the Graver bases of scrolls is given in terms of colored partition identities. This leads to a sharp bound on the degree of Graver basis elements, which is always attained by a circuit. The main result of the paper under review shows the following assertions hold: (1) The degree of any binomial in the Graver basis (and the universal Gröbner basis) of any rational normal scroll is bounded above by the degree of the scroll. (2) Let \(X\) be any toric variety that can be obtained from a scroll by a sequence of projections to some of the coordinate hyperplanes. Then the degree of an element of any reduced Gröbner basis of the toric ideal \(I_{X}\) is at most the degree of the toric variety \(X\).