What is seed? – Seed is starting and end point a plant life cycle. A plant starts with seeds and end
The purpose of the seed is – germination new plant, acting as a food reservoir and protecting embryo under its coat till suitable growing conditions are met. While exploring flowers we have understood how seeds are formed, a mature ovule.
Parts of a Seed
- Embryo : an immature plant encapsulated within the seeds
- Endosperm : short term food reservoir to survive early days of germination. That’s why when germinating from seeds you do not require fertilizer in the grow medium as the seed is carrying food for first few days of germinations.
- Seed Coat : protective layer to bear harsh weather condition and extended period of summer, dry spell or extreme winters.
Pollination
While we are at seeds, lets look at a rather interesting topic yet controversial topic of modern world. But before that lets understand Pollination a little better.
In nature pollen grain reaches a flower in uncontrolled manner and merely by luck, gush of wind or dancing honey bee or spell of rain can cause transfer of pollen from anther to stigma, this process is called pollination. Pollination is genesis of seed formation. Like human babies, seed carry some characteristics of their parents. In a season, plant produces millions of seeds, these seeds get released in vicinity of plants itself. However some seeds do not carry the best traits of parents and are relatively weaker than other. With changing seasons and weather cycle, only the fittest seeds survives till next growing season. This process is called natural selection or survival of the fittest. This process continues year on year and every year a strong variety of seeds is evolved naturally. This the reason we don’t find one variety of plant overcrowding particular area in uncultivated areas like forest. Natural selection keeps the balance in jungle ecosystem, unlike modern human establishments.
CATEGORIES OF SEEDS : Now depending on how the pollination happened seeds are categorized in below categories – Open Pollinated, Heirloom or Heritage seeds, Hybrid seeds and Genetically modified (GMO)seeds.
Open Pollinated Seeds
If the pollination happened naturally in uncontrolled environment, also called OP seeds.
Heirloom or Heritage Seeds
Open pollinated seeds with history of being passed down within a family or community.
Hybrid Seeds
Chosen variety are allowed to pollinate in control environment, genes with desired strong character are cross pollinated. The seeds carry F1 mark on them, the main drawback of hybrid seeds in many important characters get eliminated during hybrid pollination since they don’t not carry benefit for seed producer however are very crucial for evolution of crop. We will understand this better at later stage.
Genetically Modified(GMO) Seeds
These are laboratory made seeds from genetically altered plants.
OP and Heirloom seeds are best seeds for aware and conscious gardeners, these seed can also be saved by growers to grow plants year on year. Hybrid or GMO seeds cannot be saved by grower and they have to rely on seed producer every year to grow same crop.
This bring us to controversy about seed dependency, usage of hybrid and GMO seed will result in group of companies/individuals controlling supply of food on earth as they wipe out OP and heirloom seeds from face of earth.
