Despite their lower yield, regular seed is an expert-favorite. They’re perfect for breeders who want to create a new strain, as the seeds will grow into a mix of male and female plants.
Germinating regular weed seeds doesn’t differ much from germinating other types of seeds. It all comes down to how the seeds are kept and their moisture levels.
Breeding
Breeding is the process of selecting and mating animals or plants with the purpose of producing a new generation that has desirable traits. Breeding is important because it allows us to create crops that are more resistant to biotic (pests, diseases, predation) and abiotic (heat, cold, water stress, salinity) stresses while also being adapted to the climate conditions where they will be grown.
Breeders often evaluate the performance of individuals using pedigree records and various functions to estimate breeding values. But these values are not accurate because each parent only transmits sample halves of their genes to their offspring and distant ancestors provide even less genetic information.
Plant breeding is a complex and time consuming process. It can take 4-6 generations before desirable results are seen. But because of increasing consumer expectations and climate change, breeding is more important than ever. It is an essential part of modern agriculture.
Cloning
Cloning sounds like some kind of crazy science fiction process but it’s actually fairly simple. All it involves is taking a piece of tissue from an existing plant (the mother) and then growing it into a new plant. The resulting plant will have the same genetics as the original mother, making it an exact copy.
The key to successful cloning is obtaining a healthy mother plant. The best way to do this is by topping a plant in week eight of veg and then cutting the developing branches with sharp scalpels or pruning shears that can be cleaned easily after use. The cutting should be done in the dark to avoid nutrient loss due to photosynthesis activation.
This enables the grower to create a whole crop of plants that will all be identical genetically. It also makes it much easier to reproduce your favourite phenotype or even create a whole new strain. Seeds on the other hand are less predictable and can produce offspring that may be slightly different in appearance, colour, taste, smell or potency.
Pollination
Pollination is the transfer of male plant parts (anthers) to female parts (pistil). This allows fertilization and the production of seeds. It takes place when a bird, bee, bat, insect, butterfly, moth, or other animal, wind, water, or other plant moves pollen from the anthers of one flower to the stigma of another. In this way, flowers of the same species are crossed to produce seed. Cross-pollination also allows mixing of genetic material between different flowers, which leads to more diverse offspring and helps plants adapt to changing environments.
Many crops require pollination for successful fruit and seed production. Experiments using bags and netting that exclude or allow birds, bees, insects, or other pollinators to access the flower can be used to identify which factors are most important for a specific crop. In these experiments, the seed or fruit set of a plant is compared to those of a control (without pollination). This allows for a comparison between different treatments and their effect on the plant.
Genetics
Genetics is the study of heredity—that is, how our characteristics get passed from one generation to the next. Genes determine whether we will have blonde hair like our mother or brown hair like our father, and they also control whether a baby is male or female.
Seed breeders select strains with desired traits and then cross-pollinate them to create offspring. The offspring inherits the traits from both parents and will eventually pass them on to future generations.
Domesticated beans have evolved distinct seed microbiomes compared to wild populations of the same species. However, the evolutionary processes that shape these differences remain poorly understood. In the current study, we investigated the effect of genetic variation on seed dormancy in common bean. RT-qPCR analysis of candidate genes revealed that the coding sequence of Phvul.003G277500 in TARS-HT1 and PR9920-171 seeds contains a 5-bp insertion resulting in a frame shift and loss-of-function mutation that enhances dormancy. In addition, the seed coats of TARS-HT1 seeds exhibited 21-fold higher water imbibition than PR9920-171 seeds after scarification.