Environmental regulation of seed performance

The seed stage is an essential episode in the life cycle of higher plants. The environmental cues that seeds experience during their development are important components of their life history. The parental environment, from pre-fertilization until seed dispersal affects performance of the dry mature seed and, therefore, affects the life cycle of the next generation. The evolutionary response to environmental perturbations has resulted in genetic changes in order to increase the fitness of the population, which is called ‘adaptation’. The aims of this study were to increase our understanding of how environments regulate seed performance, both on the long term, i.e. through adaptation of seed performance traits to local conditions and on the short term, i.e. by acclimation of plants to different seed maturation environments.