Tag: Plant Reproduction

Instead of regularly flowering and fruiting each year, some long-lived species exhibit annually variable reproduction events. This phenomenon, known as masting, is considered an adaptation to reduce the losses from seed predation: in years of high reproduction, seeds are so abundant that predators become…

1-Aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) is the precursor of the phytohormone ethylene. Here, Mou and co-workers show ACC to act independent of ethylene in the ovule to attract growing pollen tubes. Mutants impaired in ACC biosynthesis had less fertilization and seed setting events. Fertilization…

Floral architecture influences pollination and reproduction: open flowers facilitate cross-pollination, while closed flowers limit outcross. Some plants of the Leguminosae family (i.e., members of the Papilionoideae subfamily that includes soybean, pea, medicago, lotus) possess a complex architecture,…

The dispersal capacity of wind-dispersed seeds is expected to be shaped by seed mass, with lighter seeds dispersed further due to low terminal velocity (i.e., maximum velocity while falling). However, this relationship has been mostly tested comparing species from different taxonomic groups, rather…

The origin of seeds - the specialized structures that contain and protect the developing embryos- is a key event in plant evolution. Primitive seeds comprise an exposed nucellus surrounded by a lobate integument; in contrast, extant seeds have one or more integuments fully enclosing the nucellus.…

Vacuolar-type ATPase (V-ATPase) is a highly conserved enzyme but functionally diverse among eukaryotic cells. V-ATPases couple the energy released by ATP hydrolysis to pump protons across membranes of many cell types. In Arabidopsis, the V-ATPases containing different isoforms of V-ATPase catalytic…

PollenCounter is an open source, ImageJ based macro that splits RGB images of stained pollen grains into the primary channels. The program estimates pollen viability in plants through analyzing red (total number of pollen grains) and green (only viable pollen grains) images, after which the particles…

Seed-bearing annual plants essentially get one shot at getting their reproductive timing right; too early and there won’t be enough stored nutrients to produce healthy seeds, and too late and the seeds might not mature fully before bad weather or rot sets in. Previously, the RAV (RELATED TO ABI3 AND…