Seed banks

JutUa, H. M. 1996. Seed bank and emergent vascular flora of ballast areas in Reposaari, Finland. Ann. Bot. Fenn. 33 165-182. [Cited by Keskitalo et ai, 2001.]... 

A chemical stimulant, a root exudate, is required to break seed dormancy of a parasitic weed and initiate seed germination. Upon receiving a signal for germination, a radicle emerges from the seed coat. However, an additional chemical signal is needed for the radicle to penetrate host roots and form a haustorium. Therefore several plants can serve as catch crops or trap crops for the reduction of the parasitic weed seed bank in infested soil. 

These days, allelopathic plants as catch crops or trap crops found utilization in plant protection of tropical regions against parasitic weeds. They do not eliminate the parasite completely but decrease the seed bank in the soil. Other applications of allelopathy for weed control include the use of plant residues as a natural herbicide agent, e.g., water extracts, pellets, flours, by-products of crop processing, etc. The strategies for use of volatile compounds as soil fumigants are developed. 

Abebe G, Sahile G, Al-Tawaha ARM (2005) Evaluation of potential trap crops on Orobanche. soil seed bank and tomato yield in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia. World J Agric Sci 1 148-151... 

Quality control of plant-made biopharmaceuticals for commercial use includes the development of a seed bank based on the transgenic plant expressing the therapeutic product, the development of a population of plants grown from a seed bank, the harvesting of these plants, and their subsequent subjection to an extraction and purification process similar to... 

As it is imperative that the plant-derived hiopharmaceutical product must be obtained repeatedly and on a consistent basis, a master cell culture bank, seed bank for transgenic plants, or virus seed stock for transient expression systems must be constantly maintained. Storage conditions must therefore he optimized to prevent contamination and ensure viability. Both transgene stability (e.g., reversion to wild type or sequence drift of plant virus expression vectors) and protein expression levels must be monitored in a representative plant of a given bank or stock to minimize any possible variation in expression levels that may affect safety and consistency of the hnal product. A program that monitors lot-to-lot consistency of the hiochemical and biological properties by comparing the product with appropriate in-house reference standards could he implemented as a fundamental component of product development. 

The soil contains millions of seeds per hectare in the seed bank and these individuals are easily overlooked as members of the plant community. The dormant seeds can survive for decades in the soil hence, a population of annual plants does not have to be successful at reproducing every year in order to be sustainable. In contrast, a specialist insect herbivore of that annual species can rarely be sustained in a locaUty without a reUable source of food annually. 

Barberi, P. and Lo Cascio, B. 2001. Long-term tillage and crop rotation effects on weed seed-bank size and composition. Weed Research 41 325-340. 

Buhler, D.D., R.G. Hartzler, and F. Forcella (1998). Weed seed bank dynamics Implications to weed management. J. Crop Product., 1 145-168. 

Fenner, M. (1985). Soil seed banks (Chapter 4). In Seed Ecology. New York, NY Chapman Hall, pp. 57-71. 

Tanksley, Steve, and Susan McCouch. 1997. Seed banks and molecular maps. Unlocking genetic potential from wild species. Science 277(5329) 1063—1066. 

Three problems with seed sources, either from seed banks or university greenhouse collections, have been encountered in past molecular systematic studies. These include contaminated seed source, errors in handling or labeling, and misidentification.11 Needless to say, these problems can be circumvented by vouchering all plant tissue grown from seed (see below). 

Millennium Seed Bank Project, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, London, www.kew.org/msbp/index.htm, accessed 23 April 2009. 

Large seeded species Seed bank species... 

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