Knowing whether a given plant species forms a persistent soil seed bank is essential to understanding its ecological dynamics, yet soil seed bank studies are both labor-intensive and time-consuming. One could argue that models should help predict this. Still, seed persistence in the soil is shaped by multiple plant and environmental characteristics, so conventional statistical […]
In 1991, Jon E. Keely wrote the first review about the role of fire as a dormancy-breaking cue in California’s Mediterranean ecosystems. In this review, almost 30 years after Keely’s work, Pausas and Lamont provide us with an updated and worldwide vision of the subject. Four dormancy syndromes and their potential evolutionary drivers are presented. […]
In August 2021, The International Seed Science Society hosted its 13th International Conference. The meeting had many exciting presentations, including the keynote lecture given by Dr. Hiroyuki Nonogaki, entitled “Seed traits and pylogenomics: perspectives for the 21st Century”. This paper synthesizes the presentation’s main points, providing a solid case for the use of phylogenomics –the […]
The study of seed microbiota is rapidly getting attention among plant scientists, given its role in modulating seed germination and plant fitness. Here, Simonin and colleagues synthesize the information from 63 studies and provide a thorough overview of this topic’s current state of the art. The authors found that only 50 plants species have at […]
The seed germination niche is the set of environmental conditions in which a seed can germinate. This collection of requirements is expected to be tuned to the climate each species encounters in its natural habitat, but this hypothesis remains to be formally tested. Here, Carta and colleagues make use of the database from the European […]
Seed dormancy is widely recognized as a key mechanism to ensure that germination takes place under the most suitable conditions. Such is its importance that multiple studies have described the morphological, physiological, and genetic mechanisms behind it, yet its global distribution and the past and current environmental drivers behind it have seldom been addressed. Based […]
Angiosperm seed formation is an incredibly complex process, considering that it requires coordinating the development of three distinct structures –the embryo, the endosperm and the seed coat– in a small space. However, Doll and Ingram show us that angiosperms faced this challenge by evolving a complex network of interactions between these compartments, especially between the […]
If you work with grasses, you are probably familiar with the scutellum –the shield-like cotyledon typical of seeds from these plants. This structure has a renowned role in transferring nutrients to the growing embryo. However, Murphy and colleagues show us that not only does this structure look like a shield, but it also protects the […]
In 1967, Marianna G. Nikolaeva presented the first detailed system to classify seed dormancy based on its causes and the conditions required to break it. Later in 2004, Jerry and Carol Baskin devised a hierarchical classification system based on Nikolaeva’s proposal, which has been widely used by seed biologists all over the world. Now, the […]