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JXB Advance Access originally published online on December 21, 2006
Journal of Experimental Botany 2007 58(3):717-732; doi:10.1093/jxb/erl244
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© 2006 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

Patterns and kinetics of water uptake by soybean seeds

Chris J. Meyer1, Ernst Steudle2 and Carol A. Peterson1,*

1Department of Biology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3G1
2Department of Plant Ecology, University of Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth, Germany

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cpeterson{at}uwaterloo.ca

Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] plants produce some seeds (called stone or impermeable seeds) that do not take up water for long periods of time. The present investigation confirmed that the stone seed trait is a feature of the seed coat: isolated embryos from both stone and permeable seeds took up water equally quickly. A whole, permeable seed typically imbibed water initially through its dorsal side, forming wrinkles in the seed coat and delivering water to the underlying cotyledons. Later, some lateral movement of water through the coat occurred, presumably through the air spaces of the osteosclereid layer. Imbibition by seeds was a two-phase process, the first dominated by hydration of the seed coat and the second by hydration of the cotyledons, which was rate-limited by the coat. When hydrated, coats of stone seeds were permeable to water but their hydraulic conductivity, as measured with a pressure probe, was smaller than that of coats from permeable seeds by a factor of five. Hydrated coats of both permeable and stone seeds showed weak osmometer properties.

Key words: Cuticle, Glycine max, hydraulic conductivity, imbibition, seed coat

Received 1 June 2006; Revised 23 October 2006 Accepted 25 October 2006


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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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