Seed biology and seed resilience

Seed germination and dormancy represent key ecological and agronomical traits that determine plant establishment in natural or agricultural ecosystems. Seeds are necessary for sustainable production of food, animal feed and bioenergy. At $30 billion annually, the seed trade contributes significantly to the global economy.

Our projects address both fundamental and applied aspects of seeds. We are interested in mechanisms by which seeds sense the environment and adjust their timing of germination so as to maximize the probability of survival. One such mechanism is seed dormancy. We also study the remarkable stress tolerance of seeds. We are interested in how seeds are able to withstand severe dehydration and how they can survive for prolonged periods (up to hundreds of years).

On the applied side we attempt to integrate fundamental knowledge of seed biology with applied aspects of seed quality. We are particularly interested in the genetic components of seed quality.

Seed maturation as a system to understand resilience to extreme abiotic stresses

During seed maturation important seed quality traits, such as desiccation tolerance, longevity, and vigor are acquired. These traits are essential for seed survival and resilience to challenging environments. In our current projects we investigate how desiccation and high temperature during seed maturation affect seed survival and overall seed quality. We combine experimental physiology and several molecular, biochemistry and omics approaches to identify the genetic and molecular regulation of resilience traits in model and crop species. Our current research is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO-ENW Veni 2020, NWO-TTW OTP2022-I) and the GreenTE consortium.

Evolution of plant desiccation tolerance regulation

Currently, our main focus is on plant desiccation tolerance and our main model organism are desiccation tolerant seeds (a.k.a. orthodox seeds), and we focus on the maturation phase of seed development to identify the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) responsible for desiccation tolerance acquisition. By combining seeds and resurrection plants ‘omics’ information, we hope to understand how the GRNs of desiccation tolerance evolve in the plant lineage. With the knowledge gained from our research we are contributing with practical applications, with a special focus on improvement of seed treatments (such as priming), seed storage and overall seed quality.

Fine drying: Seed preparation for the dry state

Desiccation tolerance is acquired during the maturation phase of seed development, before actual seed drying. In our NWO-ENW-Veni project we investigate what are the possible regulatory roles of drying on gene expression, mRNA translation and stability and protein structure and function involved in desiccation tolerance acquisition during seed maturation.

With the support of the GreenTE consortium we are now diving into the mechanisms of mechanosensing underlying desiccation tolerance acquistion during seed maturation and loss during seed germination. For this, we combine biophysics and bichemistry approaches with transcriptome and phosphoproteome analyses.