92 / SEEDWORLD.COM DECEMBER 2017 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 fundamental 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 physical interactions between a seed’s embyro, endosperm and maternal tissues during early seed development. “Ménage a trois is an analogy I use quite frequently. Seed development is a very intimate relationship. It’s like a pregnancy — the embryo is the fetus, the endosperm functions like a pla- centa, 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 physical 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 is the three com- partments do communicate and sense the mechanical 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. Plant Decision-Making: Flowering and Seed Dormancy Plants make two big decisions: when to flower and reproduce, and when to terminate the dormancy of their seeds, which leads to the establishment of a plant. “We are looking at how seeds are using information from the environment to optimize the timing and positioning through which they terminate dormancy,” says Toronto’s George Bassel, member of the ISSS board who’s doing his own research into how seeds perform the feats they do. He did his Ph.D in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Guelph in 2006, and is now a professor of plant computational biology at the United Kingdom’s University of Birmingham. “Seeds are the way plants move through space. They can move from here to there, and they can move through time. Seeds are space-time travelers, and the way they exit and enter this twist of time is through dormancy. We want to know how seeds are optimizing that decision.” Such knowledge could also have a huge impact on plant stor- age, something ISSS president Henk Hilhorst of the Netherlands is studying. Hilhorst, professor in the plant sciences department at Wageningen University, studies resurrection plants — a small group of plants able to revive themselves after being completely dried — and how the ability of seeds to be stored for long peri- ods can be ported over to plant tissues themselves to possibly breed other plants to be desiccation tolerant. “Seeds can be dried and stored without dying, which is the basis of modern agriculture and civilization as we know it. This is an amazing survival strategy on the part of a seed. When you dry most plants, however, they die. In the field it can only with- stand a certain level of drought,” he says. “If we can build in that desiccation tolerance, during a period of dry weather, a plant could stop growing and the moment it starts raining, it will come back again.” This has major ramifications for the age of climate change and the breeding of drought-tolerant plants, but also could potentially be used to create new consumer products. Hilhorst already has an idea for one such product: dehydrated lettuce. Manufacturers could pack these little brown masses in a very attractive way and sell them in supermarkets for consumers to take home, put in water, and watch grow in their kitchen until it’s big enough to eat. Theoretically, the dried lettuce product could be stored indefinitely on shelves, thereby cutting down on food waste caused by unsold lettuce having to be thrown out once it’s past its best-before date. “This is something we think is fundamentally possible. In the genome of these crops, the instructions for desiccation tolerance exist, but are directed only at the seeds and not the leaf tissues. We are looking for the switch that turns it on in vegetative tissues. We’re certain it’s there — we just have to find it,” Hilhorst adds. SW Richard Smith, Cooperative Extension farm adviser - Agriculture & Natural Resources divisions at University of California. ISSS President Henk Hilhorst, professor in the plant sciences department at Wageningen University. France’s Gwyneth Ingram, researcher in the plant reproduction and development lab at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. George Bassel, professor of plant computational biology at the United Kingdom’s University of Birmingham.