Important roles for biotic agents in integrated weed management include preventing seed production and weed emergence from the seed bank. Seed-attacking microorganisms have been described for a limited number of economically important weeds and serve as examples illustrating the potential for reducing weed seed production. Innundative releases of seed-feeding insects have also successfully redu...

Hunting can change abundances of vertebrate seed predators and seed dispersers, causing species-specific changes in seed dispersal and seed predation and altering seedling communities. What are the consequences of these changes for the adult plant community in the next generation and beyond? Here, I derive equations showing how reduced seed dispersal reduces plant reproduction by intensifying k...

Australian Acacia are invasive in many parts of the world. Despite significant mechanical and biological efforts to control their invasion and spread, soil-stored seed banks prevent their effective and sustained removal. In response South Africa has had a strong focus on employing seed reducing biological control agents to deal with Australian Acacia invasion, a programme that is considered as ...

Bean seed weight and shape are important traits of different market bean classes. One of the first associations found between a genetic marker and a quantitative trait was reported by Sax ( 1923) for the relationship between seed pigmentation {P gene) and seed weight in common bean. More recently three types of molecular markers have been used to study the genetics of seed weight in common bean...

Five insect biological control agents that attack flower heads of spotted knapweed, Centaurea stoebe L. subsp. micranthos (Gugler) Hayek, became established in western Montana between 1973 and 1992. In a controlled field experiment in 2006, seed-head insects reduced spotted knapweed seed production per seed head by 84.4%. The seed production at two sites in western Montana where these biologica...

Infection of soybean plants with Soybean mosaic virus (SMV), which is transmitted by aphids and through seed, can cause significant reductions in seed production and quality. Because seedborne infections are the primary sources of inoculum for SMV infections in North America, host-plant resistance to seed transmission can limit the pool of plants that can serve as sources of inoculum. To examin...

Deserts are open environments characterized by striking shifts in temperature and light regimes. We hypothesized that the abiotic environment mediates the interaction between an ant-dispersed plant, Datura wrightii (Solanaceae), ant mutualists, and rodent seed predators in the Sonoran Desert. Field experiments contrasting diurnal and nocturnal seed collection rates in the presence of ants only,...

Fig. 3. Wrinkled, white, moldy-appearing seed infected by Phomopsis spp. More than 30 fungi are seed-borne on soybeans. Some, such as Phomopsis spp., the cause of pod and stem blight disease, can severely reduce seed viability (fi g. 1). Others cause quality problems, such as purple seed stain, caused by Cercospora kikuchii, but have less severe effects on viability. However, most fungi that ar...

Seed dispersal provides a template upon which the demographic processes of plant life cycles operate and, most importantly, seed dispersal determines the spatial distribution of genetic variation. Here, we review recent studies on seed dispersal by water (hydrochory) in species of Hibiscus to elucidate the potential ecological and evolutionary consequences of hydrochory at different spatiotempo...

Brassica crops have indeterminate growth and flower over an extended period of time. Harvested seed is therefore comprised of seed of varying degrees of physiological maturity and quality. Using population-based threshold models, broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. Group Italica), brussels sprouts (B. oleracea L. Group Gemmifera), red cabbage (B. oleracea L. Group Capitata), and rapeseed (B. napus L...