S03 - Session O1 - Keynote: Understanding seed behavior: populations of Individuals

Authors: Kent J. Bradford *

Seeds are critical for horticulture to convey advances in breeding into plants in the field. Even in clonally propagated crops, seeds are essential for breeding and for propagating rootstocks. Recent advances in seed biology have identified the importance of understanding both the individuality of each seed and how seeds behave collectively in populations. Advances in technology now enable morphological, physiological and developmental (germination) analyses of individual seeds. This information can be used for upgrading seed lots and for modeling and predicting seed behavior under diverse temperature and water conditions. Population-based threshold models can also quantify seed responses to hormones, priming, dormancy-breaking treatments, and storage conditions. Evidence is accumulating that the population-based behavior of seeds occurs also at other levels of biological organization, from molecules and cells to species. This lecture will present an overview of how individual diversity within larger populations constitutes an organizing principle for understanding seed behavior and perhaps much more.