The existence of genetic variation in offspring size in plants and animals is puzzling because offspring size is often strongly associated with fitness and expected to be under stabilizing selection. An explanation for variation in seed size is conflict between parents and between parents and offspring. However, for this hypothesis to be true, it must be shown that the offspring genotype can af...

Extensive and kinetically well-defined water exchanges occur during germination of seeds. A putative role for aquaporins in this process was investigated in Arabidopsis. Macro-arrays carrying aquaporin gene-specific tags and antibodies raised against aquaporin subclasses revealed two distinct aquaporin expression programs between dry seeds and young seedlings. High expression levels of a restri...

Doyle, J.A. and Donoghue, M.J., 1987. The importance of fossils in elucidating seed plant phylogeny and macroevolution. Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol., 50: 63--95. In order to gain insights on the controversial question of the value of fossils in understanding phylogeny and macroevolution, we used numerical parsimony methods to analyze a data set amassed for a cladistic study of living and fossil see...

1. Eruptions occur when a species appears in unusually high densities within and often outside of its normal range. We used 30 years of Christmas Bird Counts combined with cone/seed-crop data on boreal coniferous trees, breeding bird surveys, and weather records to test correlates of winter eruptions by 11 species of primarily boreal North American seed-eating birds. 2. Eruptions of six species...

in this study, moisture dependent physical, mechanical and nutritional properties of sesame seed were evaluated. in the moisture range of 4.54–19.27% (d.b.), seed length, width, thickness, arithmetic mean diameter and geometric mean diameter increased linearly from 2.93 to 3.01 mm, 1.74 to 1.78 mm, 0.78 to 0.86 mm, 1.81 to 1.88 mm and 1.58 to 1.66 mm respectively with increase in moisture conte...

As seed dormancy is released within a seed population, both the rate and percentage of germination increase progressively with increasing dose of a dormancy-breaking treatment or condition. Population-based models can account for this behaviour on the basis of shifting response thresholds as dormancy is alleviated. In particular, hydrothermal time analysis of germination sensitivity to water po...

due to the need to find new protein sources with considering the fact that the bitter vetch seed has high levels of protein content, physicochemical and mechanical properties of bitter vetch seed and functional properties of its flour were evaluated in this study. the effects of altering the ph on protein solubility, foaming capacity, foaming stability, emulsion capacity and emulsion stability ...

distribution of retinal blood vessels (rbvs) in retinal images has an important role in the prevention, diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease. therefore, detection of the exact location of rbvs is very important for ophthalmologists. one of the frequently used techniques for extraction of these vessels is region growing-based se...

glycine betaine (gb) is one of the osmotic plant-protecting members that accumulate in response to abiotic stresses. an experiment was, therefore, conducted to test whether gb application at various concentrations (0, 10, 20 and 30 mm) through seed soaking or foliar spray methods would protect cucumber seedlings, subjected to chilling stress. at two true leave stages, after gb treatment, the se...