Climate change is predicted to cause upward shifts in forest tree distributions, which will require seedling recruitment beyond current forest boundaries. However, predicting the likelihood of successful plant establishment beyond current species' ranges under changing climate is complicated by the interaction of genetic and environmental controls on seedling establishment. To determine how gen...

The effect of litter on seedling establishment can influence species richness in plant communities. The effect of litter depends on amount, and also on litter type, but relatively little is known about the species-specific effects of litter. We conducted a factorial greenhouse experiment to examine the effect of litter type, using two woody species that commonly co-occur in boreonemoral forest-...

Seed production, seed dispersal and recruitment are critical processes in population dynamics, because they are almost never completely successful. We recorded the recruitment dynamics for the population of Dipteryx oleifera in a tropical rainforest in eastern Nicaragua (12 degrees 05' N., 83 degrees 55' W.) from March 2002 to August 2006. Seeds and seedlings had highly clumped distributions, w...

Planting seedlings is a common technique for abandoned pastures restoration in the tropics, supposedly by increasing the seedling recruitment and accelerating succession. In this study we evaluated the role of a young restored forest (one year old) in enhancing seedling establishment from two sources (seed rain and seed bank), in the Atlantic Rainforest region in Southern Brazil. We compared ab...

Triacylglycerol (TAG) is a major storage reserve in many plant seeds. We previously identified a TAG lipase mutant called sugar-dependent1 (sdp1) that is impaired in TAG hydrolysis following Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) seed germination (Eastmond, 2006). The aim of this study was to identify additional lipases that account for the residual TAG hydrolysis observed in sdp1. Mutants were iso...

in order to evaluate a better sowing date of chickpea cultivars in dry land conditions, a factorial experiment in randomized complete block design with four replications was carried out at research station of bahar (hamadan province) during 2005-2006 cropping season. two planting time included winter and spring and four chickpea cultivars (cvs.) including one local (check) and three improved cv...

Poor seed germination and early seedling growth associated with urea-induced soil ammonia volatilization are major constraints in the adoption of dry direct-seeded rice. To directly examine soil ammonia volatilization and its damage to seed germination and early seedling growth of dry direct-seeded rice when urea is applied at seeding, two Petri-dish incubation experiments and a field experimen...

To study the effects of halopriming and hydropriming in overcoming salt and drought stress in corn (Zea mays L.),two experiments were separately conducted at Shahrood University of Technology. Seed treatments consisted ofcontrol (untreated seeds), soaking in distilled water for 32 h (hydropriming), and soaking in 50 mmol solution ofCaCl2 for 16 h (halopriming). Germination and early seedling gr...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The date of emergence may have far-reaching implications for seedling performance. Seedlings emerging early in the growing season often have a greater rate of survival or grow better if early emergence provides advantages with respect to an environmental cue. As a result, the benefits of early emergence may be lost if the environmental stress creating the differences among c...

1 We analyse the factors controlling seedling establishment of Scots pine at its southernmost geographical limit (southern Spain), by monitoring emergence, survival and growth for up to 4 years in the microhabitats to which seeds are dispersed. Naturally established seedlings were monitored in two mountain ranges, and experimental sowings were performed both in woodlands and in adjacent success...