Klasen Daniel, Fischbach Andreas, Sydoruk Viktor, Kochs Johannes, Bühler Jonas, Koller Robert, Huber Gregor
Institute of Bio- and Geosciences: Plant Sciences (IBG-2), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany.
Front Plant Sci. 2025 Apr 28;16:1539424. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1539424. eCollection 2025.
Plants adapt seed traits in response to different environmental triggers, supporting the survival of the next generation. To elucidate the mechanistic understanding of such adaptations it is important to characterize the distributions of seed traits by phenotyping seeds on an individual scale and to correlate these traits with corresponding plant properties. Here we introduce a seed-to-plant-tracking pipeline which enables automated handling and high precision phenotyping of Arabidopsis seeds as well as germination detection and early growth quantification of emerging plants. It includes previously published measurement platforms (Seeder, Growscreen), which were improved for very small seeds. We demonstrate the performance of the pipeline by comparing seeds from two consecutive generations of elevated temperature during flowering with control seeds. Relative standard deviation of repeated seed mass measurements was reduced to 0.2%. We identified an increase in seed mass, volume, length, width, height, and germination time as well as a darkening of the seeds under the treatment. A correlation analysis revealed relationships between seed and plant traits, e.g., a highly significant negative correlation between seed brightness and germination time, and a positive correlation between seed mass and early growth rate, but no correlation between time of emergence and morphometric seed traits (e.g., mass, volume). Thus, the seed-to-plant tracking provides the basis for investigating the mechanism of seed and plant trait variation and transgenerational inheritance.
植物会根据不同的环境触发因素来调整种子特性，以保障下一代的存活。为了深入理解这种适应性的机制，通过在个体尺度上对种子进行表型分析来描述种子特性的分布，并将这些特性与相应的植物属性相关联，这一点很重要。在此，我们介绍一种种子到植株追踪流程，它能够对拟南芥种子进行自动化处理和高精度表型分析，以及对新长出植株进行发芽检测和早期生长量化。它包括之前已发表的测量平台（播种机、生长筛选仪），这些平台针对非常小的种子进行了改进。我们通过比较开花期连续两代经历高温处理的种子与对照种子，来展示该流程的性能。重复种子质量测量的相对标准偏差降至0.2%。我们发现处理后的种子在质量、体积、长度、宽度、高度和发芽时间方面有所增加，并且种子颜色变深。相关性分析揭示了种子和植株特性之间的关系，例如种子亮度与发芽时间之间存在极显著的负相关，种子质量与早期生长速率之间存在正相关，但出苗时间与种子形态特征（如质量、体积）之间没有相关性。因此，种子到植株追踪为研究种子和植株特性变异及跨代遗传的机制提供了基础。
