Seed dormancy has fundamental importance in plant survival and crop production; however, the mechanisms regulating dormancy remain unclear [1-3]. Seed dormancy levels generally decrease during domestication to ensure that crops successfully germinate in the field. However, reduction of seed dormancy can cause devastating losses in cereals like wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and barley (Hordeum vu...

Freshly harvested barley seeds are considered as dormant since they do not germinate at temperatures above 20 degrees C. This dormancy is broken during dry storage. Molecular regulation of dormancy was investigated using cDNA-AFLP to identify transcripts differentially expressed in dormant and non-dormant embryos. Transcript patterns in embryos from dry dormant and non-dormant seeds and from bo...

When heat shocked, plant cells distribute their energy to make a very different set of proteins than when at normal temperatures. Along with other secretory proteins, α-amylase is particularly affected by heat shock. This protein is responsible for digesting the starchy food stores contained in the endosperm of a barley seed. These starchy nutrients comprise the largest part of the food store t...

Seed coating is a technology to improve germination and homogenize stand establishment. Although coating often results in lower germination rates, seeds that do germinate grow more vigorously and show strongly reduced respiratory losses during reserve mobilization. We hypothesize that the higher mobilization efficiency is due to a shift in the enzymatic cleavage of sucrose from invertase to suc...

Scutella separated from grains of Himalaya barley after germination for 3 days rapidly took up l-leucine from aerated incubation media; with 1 millimolar leucine the rate varied between 4 and 14 micromoles per gram per hour and the pH optimum was at 3.5 to 5, both depending on buffer composition and prewashing time. The rate of the uptake increased with increasing concentration of leucine in a ...

The ability of seeds to germinate at high salt concentration in the soil is crucial importance for the survival and perpetuation of many plant species. Therefore, we examined effects of different concentrations of NaCl (200, 400, 600 and 800 mM) on germination of four species from fam. Solanaceae and Brassicaceae (Capsicum annum, Solanum lycopersicum, Brasica oleracea and Sinapis alba). By this...