A total of 206 wheat and 200 barley farmers were interviewed in northeastern Syria to understand farmer perceptions and practice relating to modern varieties, seed sources and seed quality. Wheat farmers had better awareness and grew modern varieties (87%), applied fertilizers (99.5%), herbicides (93%), seed treatment (90%) or insecticides (41%). In contrast barley growers had low awareness (36...

Seed banks, the reserve of viable seeds dormant in the soil, function in several important roles in the population and community dynamics of plant communities. Identification of the seed bank can furnish information on the vegetation history of a habitat, predict the future composition of the plant community, and provide insight on the seed viability and biology of plant species. Although seed ...

ABSTRACT The effect of seed meals derived from Brassica juncea, B. napus, or Sinapis alba on suppression of soilborne pathogens inciting replant disease of apple was evaluated in greenhouse trials. Regardless of plant source, seed meal amendment significantly improved apple growth in all orchard soils; however, relative differences in pathogen suppression were observed. All seed meals suppresse...

Janzen-Connell effects are negative effects on the survival of a plant's progeny at high conspecific densities or close to its conspecifics. Although the role of Janzen-Connell effects on the maintenance of plant diversity was frequently studied, only few studies targeted Janzen-Connell effects via postdispersal seed predation in temperate grassland systems. We examined effects of conspecific d...

Seed production of annual weeds persisting through cropping phases replenishes/establishes viable seed banks from which these weeds will continue to interfere with crop production. Harvest weed seed control (HWSC) systems are now viewed as an effective means of interrupting this process by targeting mature weed seed, preventing seed bank inputs. However, the efficacy of these systems is directl...

We assessed the size and composition of the seed bank in 31 plots representing a range of habitats within an old-growth, temperate deciduous forest at Mont St. Hilaire, Québec, Canada. We identified 49 taxa in the seed bank, with an average of 40 species·m–2 and a median density of 1218 seeds·m–2. The most frequent seeds were species of Carex and Rubus, Diervilla lonicera, and Eupatorium rugosu...

Hybrid rice and insecticide seed treatments targeting rice water weevil, Lissorhoptrus oryzophilus Kuschel, have altered the landscape of rice production. The effect of reduced seeding rates on seed treatment efficacy in hybrid rice has not been studied. During 2011 and 2012, an experiment was conducted at seven locations to determine the relationship between low seeding rates used in hybrid ri...

Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), like many legumes, are rich in iron, zinc, and certain other microelements that are generally found to be in low concentrations in cereals, other seed crops, and root or tubers and therefore are good candidates for biofortification. But a quandary exists in common bean biofortification: namely that the distribution of iron has been found to be variable betw...

This study aims to determine the effect of twig (current year shoot) size on seed size variation and to test whether a seed size vs number tradeoff occurs for the twigs of subtropical broad-leaved species. Fruit-bearing twigs were sampled for 55 woody species (including 33 evergreen and 22 deciduous dicot species) from a southwest Chinese forest. Twig size, fruit size and number, and seed size ...

Proteomics approaches have been a useful tool for determining the biological roles and functions of individual proteins and identifying the molecular mechanisms that govern seed germination, vigour and viability in response to ageing. In this work the dry seed proteome of four Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes, that carry introgression fragments at the position of seed longevity quantitative trait...