At a certain point in their life cycle, annual plants undergo amajor developmental transition and switch from vegetative to reproductive development. This process is rarely reversible, and ensuring that the timing of this transition is optimal for pollination and seed development is a major factor in reproductive success. Physiological and genetic analysis of flowering has shown that multiple e...

The recently proposed Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN) represents a flexible system of nomenclature for the description of biological networks, comparable to the notation employed by designers of electronic circuits. It allows the uniform and unambiguous display of complex biological information. Here we present an application of SBGN to describe processes occurring during seed develop...

Soybean (Glycine max L.) glycinin is composed of five subunits which are classified into two groups (group I: A1aB1b, A1bB2, and A2B1a; group II: A3B4 and A5A4B3). All the common soybean cultivars contain both group I and II subunits (Maruyama, N. et al., Phytochemistry, 64, 701-708 (2003)). The biosynthesis of group I starts earlier compared with that of the A3B4 subunit during seed developmen...

Growth and yield of potato plants grown from several weight classes of whole "B" seed, unsorted "B" seed, and 56 g cut seed pieces were compared in Ohio in 1988 and 1989. Whole "B" seed classes were 8 g ranges with means of 35 g, 43 g, 51 g, and 58 g. Unsorted "B" seed was used as an experimental control. Treatment responses were inconsistent. Few significant differences were evident at bloom i...

A new study has found that, in Arabidopsis, the paternal copies of many genes are delayed in expression during early seed development. The distribution of the genes and nature of their products suggest that this delayed expression of paternal alleles may be a global phenomenon.

The position in which seeds develop on the parental plant can have an effect on dormancy-break and germination. We tested the hypothesis that the proportion of seeds with intermediate physiological dormancy (PD) produced in the proximal position on a raceme of Isatis violascens plants is higher than that produced in the distal position, and further that this difference is related to temperature...

Seed size is a plastic trait of the plants that directly affect seed germination and seedling recruitment. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between seed size, seed germinability and seedling performance of Copaifera langsdorffii by testing four hypotheses: 1) larger seeds have higher germination percentage; 2) smaller seeds require less time to germinate and for initial developm...

The last 30 years have led to increasing dissatisfaction by seed producers and consumers with the standard germination test as the sole criterion of seed performance potential presented on a seed label. As a result, new seed testing techniques have been formulated known as seed vigor tests that provide more sensitive measures of seed quality. The ISTA and AOSA Vigor Test Committees have been at...

Arabidopsis APETALA2 (AP2) encodes a member of the AP2/EREBP (ethylene responsive element binding protein) class of transcription factors and is involved in the specification of floral organ identity, establishment of floral meristem identity, suppression of floral meristem indeterminancy, and development of the ovule and seed coat. Here, we show that loss-of-function ap2 mutations cause an inc...

BACKGROUND: Seed can play a critical role in increasing agricultural productivity: it determines the upper limit of crop yields and the productivity of all other agricultural inputs to the farming system. In the mid-1970s, governments and donors recognized the critical role of seed in agricultural transformation and began to provide substantial support for seed system development. Since then, F...