The understanding of seed dormancy, germination and longevity are important goals in plant biology, with relevant applications for agriculture, food industry and also human nutrition. Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) are key molecules involved in the release of dormancy, when their concentrations fall within the so called 'oxidative window.' The mechanisms of ROS distribution and sensing in seeds,...

predicting seed viability would be extremely beneficial to seed producers and the prediction of seed viability depends on understanding the quantitative relationships between seed longevity, seed moisture content and storage temperature. thus, the objective of this investigation was to quantify relationship between temperatures, seed moisture and seed deterioration and determination seed viabil...

We conducted a long-term investigation to ascertain effects on honey bee, Apis mellifera L., colonies during and after exposure to flowering canola, Brassica napus variety Hyola 420, grown from clothianidin-treated seed. Colonies were placed in the middle of 1-ha clothianidin seed-treated or control canola fields for 3 wk during bloom, and thereafter they were moved to a fall apiary. There were...

Nitrogen fertilization is a key practice in agriculture and its effects on yield quality of most commodity products are widely known. However, the response seed production to N fertilization, especially with regard quality, still poorly understood. The objective this study was determine effect tomato quality. Six attributes were assessed (weight, standard germination, germination rate under nor...

The recent development of genetically modified sugarcane, with the aim of commercial production, requires an understanding of the potential risks of increased weediness of sugarcane as a result of spread and persistence of volunteer sugarcane. As sugarcane is propagated vegetatively from pieces of stalk and the seed plays no part in the production cycle, the fate of seed in the environment is y...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Seed survival in the soil contributes to population persistence and community diversity, creating a need for reliable measures of soil seed bank persistence. Several methods estimate soil seed bank persistence, most of which count seedlings emerging from soil samples. Seasonality, depth distribution and presence (or absence) in vegetation are then used to classify a species'...