JANUARY 2018 GERMINATION.CA 37 “Seed is really a baseline resource we use here. We need high-quality seed and well developed varieties with characteristics the market wants. The market is very demanding,” says Richard Smith, Cooperative Extension farm adviser in the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of California, who took attendees on a tour of the valley’s artichoke and lettuce fields. Artichokes have been a seed success story in the valley in recent years. The once-dominant perennial artichoke propagated by cuttings has been displaced by the annual (seeded) artichoke, which is now grown exten- sively for its resistance to disease and the fact that less labour is needed to harvest them. Dominant varieties include Imperial Star and Emerald. “The growers have needs for high production, so disease resistance and everything else is very important. We rely on the seed industry for new products that meet those needs.” Those new products begin with fundamental research done by seed scientists like those belonging to the ISSS. Bradford’s research looks at plant flowering times, and how flow- ering could one day be controlled to suit industry needs. “We have a lot of crops like those here in California — lettuce, spinach, cabbage — where the product is not the seed, it’s the vegetative part. A lot of breeding goes on to prevent those crops from flowering. If we have a spell of hot weather and the lettuce flowers, it spoils the crop. How can we stop that from happening?” Bradford says. “Of course, when you want seed, you need them to flower. It looks like we can find the trigger and tell them when not to flower and when to do so and create seed. That would be an incredible ability for plant breeders and seed companies to have.” Ménage à Trois? France’s Gwyneth Ingram, researcher in the plant reproduction and development lab at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, is one of those researchers doing important fun- damental research into how seeds function and how we can harness that power in ways we’ve never been able to before. Her keynote speech “The Developing Seed: A Mechanical Ménage a Trois” gave attendees important insight into the physi- cal interactions between a seed’s embyro, endosperm and maternal tis- sues during early seed development. “Ménage a trois is an analogy I use quite frequently. Seed develop- ment is a very intimate relationship. It’s like a pregnancy — the embryo is the fetus, the endosperm functions like a placenta, and the maternal tissues are like a uterus. I want to know how these three compartments interact with one another, and how does one tissue respond to the physi- cal forces imposed on it by another tissue in the seed?” she says. “The communication that goes on is very complicated.” A key finding of Ingram’s research is that the three compartments do communicate and sense the mechani- cal stresses imposed on them by one another. Knowing more about these basic communication mechanisms could one day help plant breeders control basic characteristics like seed size and speed of germination. France’s Gwyneth Ingram, researcher in the plant reproduction and development lab at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Richard Smith, Cooperative Extension farm adviser in the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of California, talks about the numerous varieties of lettuce grown in the Salinas Valley. Recruiting Services Career Coaching Online Job Board www.agstep.com Take the next step in your Agriculture career