Tag: Seed science

Barley is a globally important cereal crop, so understanding barley grain development is of much interest. Here, Kovacik et al. investigated transcriptional changes in barley grains at five points across development, 4, 8, 16, 24 and 32 days after pollination. For each time point, grains were manually…

Grape (Vitis vinifera) is a globally cultivated fruit for fresh or processed consumption, and seedless grapes are highly preferred for consumer convenience. In seedless grapes, fertilization occurs but the embryo subsequently aborts, although the molecular basis for this abortion is not understood. Zhang…

Different breeding programs worldwide have developed various cultivars that can cope with changing and increasingly unpredictable environments while meeting market needs. These developments have brought a new challenge: creating tools to distinguish such varieties and trace their genetic purity. Using…

Self-burying seeds are high on the list of “aren’t plants amazing”. Seeds of several species carry appendages that change shape when exposed to moisture and that are oriented in such a way so that their shape changes push the seed underground (don’t take our word for it – see https://youtu.be/TOJG5mF6OLs).…

The seeds of the Agarwood tree (Aquilaria sinensis) lose viability within a few hours of the fruit splitting, so need to reach the ground as soon as possible. Qin et al. report that agarwood achieves this by fooling hornets (Vespa spp.), which generally eat herbivore insects such as caterpillars. When…

Secondary dormancy (SD) of seeds is a natural strategy that allows survival of the plant in environments with unfavourable climatic conditions. However, in Arabidopsis, a variance of dormancy depth in between identical seeds can be explained by population-based threshold models. This single-seed variability…

The ABA INSENSITIVE (ABI) transcription factors (TFs) (ABI3, ABI4, ABI5) regulate DT and play essential roles during seed germination. Therefore, these TFs must be functionally protected during seed desiccation. Recalcitrant seeds are sensitive to desiccation, while orthodox seeds possess a remarkable…