Department of Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Wellcome Trust Millennium Building, Wakehurst Place, Ardingly, West Sussex, RH17 6TN, UK.
New Phytol. 2019 Oct;224(2):557-562. doi: 10.1111/nph.16006. Epub 2019 Jul 5.
Much is known about the inter-specific distribution of life span in a wide diversity of vertebrates and in adult plants, but not for seeds, yet the functional trait seed life span underpins global agriculture, plant species conservation and seed persistence in the soil. We sourced data for five storage conditions (soil seed bank; high temperature - high humidity accelerated ageing; temperate, cooler, open storage; cool, dry, refrigerator; and cold, dry, freezer); and analysed the distribution of orthodox seed life span amongst crop and wild species. In all cases, whether for maximum known in situ life span in the soil seed bank (417 species), or for half-lives (P50s) ex situ (732 species), the distribution is right-skewed. The finding that seeds of > 50% of species are likely to have life spans ≤ 20% of the longest recorded under the same conditions has implications for future research on the evolution of seed traits and gene bank collections management.
人们对广泛的脊椎动物和成年植物的寿命在种间的分布了解很多，但对种子的寿命却知之甚少，而种子寿命这一功能性状是全球农业、植物物种保护和种子在土壤中持久性的基础。我们为五种储存条件（土壤种子库；高温高湿度加速老化；温带、较凉爽、开放式储存；凉爽、干燥、冰箱储存；和寒冷、干燥、冰柜储存）收集了数据，并分析了作物和野生物种中正统种子寿命的分布。在所有情况下，无论是在土壤种子库中最长的原位寿命（417 种），还是在原位半衰期（P50s）（732 种），分布都是右偏的。超过 50%的物种的种子寿命可能只有相同条件下最长记录的种子寿命的 20%，这对未来研究种子特性的进化和基因库收藏管理具有重要意义。
