Arabidopsis in the wild—the effect of seasons on seed performance

Climate changes play a central role in the adaptive life histories of organisms all over the world. In higher plants, these changes may impact seed performance, both during seed development and after dispersal. To examine the plasticity of seed performance as a response to environmental fluctuations, eight genotypes known to be affected in seed dormancy and longevity were grown in the field in all seasons of two years. Soil and air temperature, day length, precipitation, and sun hours per day were monitored. We show that seed performance depends on the season. Seeds produced by plants grown in the summer, when the days began to shorten and the temperature started to decrease, were smaller with deeper dormancy and lower seed longevity compared to the other seasons when seeds were matured at higher temperature over longer days. The performance of seeds developed in the different seasons was compared to seeds produced in controlled conditions. This revealed that plants grown in a controlled environment produced larger seeds with lower dormancy than those grown in the field. All together the results show that the effect of the environment largely overrules the genetic effects, and especially, differences in seed dormancy caused by the different seasons were larger than the differences between the genotypes.</p

Seed Science and Technology. Volume 48 Issue 2 (2020)

Seeds show incredible variation in their attributes, such as dormancy, longevity and, hence, quality. It is of eminent importance to study this variation across and within species and higher taxa in order to ensure successful agricultural production and preservation of biodiversity, not least in times of a changing climate

Seed dormancy and germination: a critical update

Seeds are the prime source of food in the world, not only from a nutritional point of view but also as the basis of crop production. A key requirement for farmers is vigorous and fast-germinating seed to guarantee a uniform crop of high yield. This is quite opposite to the natural behaviour of seeds which employ dormancy to spread the risk of premature death over time. This chapter addresses the genetic and molecular mechanisms of dormancy and germination. It highlights some of the most important regulatory principles, particularly in relation to the inherent complexity of the seed as a biological system, entailing numerous layers of organisation and regulation, from cells to the environment

High-throughput scoring of seed germination

High-throughput analysis of seed germination for phenotyping large genetic populations or mutant collections is very labor intensive and would highly benefit from an automated setup. Although very often used, the total germination percentage after a nominated period of time is not very informative as it lacks information about start, rate, and uniformity of germination, which are highly indicative of such traits as dormancy, stress tolerance, and seed longevity. The calculation of cumulative germination curves requires information about germination percentage at various time points. We developed the GERMINATOR package: a simple, highly cost-efficient, and flexible procedure for high-throughput automatic scoring and evaluation of germination that can be implemented without the use of complex robotics. The GERMINATOR package contains three modules: (I) design of experimental setup with various options to replicate and randomize samples; (II) automatic scoring of germination based on the color contrast between the protruding radicle and seed coat on a single image; and (III) curve fitting of cumulative germination data and the extraction, recap, and visualization of the various germination parameters. GERMINATOR is a freely available package that allows the monitoring and analysis of several thousands of germination tests, several times a day by a single person.</p