Abstract Plant breeding and seed technology are the two arms of crop improvement programmes. The ultimate goal any plant programme is to make available quality seeds new improved varieties in adequate quantity farmers. Modern techniques have enabled development with desired traits at a much higher pace than ever before, addressing challenges food nutritional security. A large number being bred ...

Mast seeding, the synchronous, highly variable seed production among years, is very common in tree species, but there is no consensus about its main causes and the main environmental factors affecting it. In this study, we first analyze a long-term data set on reproductive and vegetative growth of Quercus ilex in a mediterranean woodland in order to identify the main environmental drivers of in...

Population genetics models typically consider a fixed population size and a unique selection coefficient. However, population dynamics inherently generate noise in numbers of individuals and selection acts on various components of the individuals’ fitness. In plant species with seed banks, the size of both the aboveand below-ground compartments present noise depending on seed production and the...

Production of high quality seeds is of fundamental importance for successful crop production. However, knowledge of the effects of increased temperature resulting from global warming on seed quality of alpine species is limited. We investigated the effect of maternal environment on seed quality of three cultivars of the leguminous forage species Vicia sativa, giving particular attention to temp...

An economy of scale may lead to selection to increase interannual variation in seed production when the per seed probability of seedling establishment increases with seed production. Variable annual seedfall will, however, reduce this probability when postdispersal seed fate is negatively density dependent on the local density of seeds, and seed dispersal and density dependence act identically ...

The production of seed by both selfing and outcrossing, or mixed mating, may be selected for under conditions of variable pollinator availability. Seed production was examined following experimental manipulations of perfect and pistillate flowers of the gynomonoecious plant Silene noctiflora. Style excision experiments in a greenhouse demonstrated that autonomous selfing occurs in the perfect f...