Genetic analysis of embryo dormancy. Final report

Primary dormancy is the inability of mature seed to immediately germinate until specific environmental stimuli are perceived that predict that future conditions will support plant growth and seed set. The analysis of abscisic acid deficient and insensitive mutants, in particular in Arabidopsis, suggests that embryo abscisic acid may be directly involved in the development of primary dormancy. Other studies implicate the continued accumulation of LEA proteins as inhibiting germination in dormant embryos. The results of these physiological, molecular and genetic approaches are complex and equivocal. There is a real need for approaches that test the separate nature of vivipary inhibition and primary dormancy and deliberately seed to decouple and dissect them. These approaches should be of help in understanding both late embryo development and primary dormancy. The approach taken here is to directly isolate mutants of Arabidopsis that appear to be deficient only in primary dormancy, that is fresh seed that germinate rapidly without the normally-required cold-stratification. The authors have isolated at least 8 independent, rapidly germinating RGM mutants of Arabidopsis. All others aspects of plant growth and development appear normal in these lines, suggesting that the rgm mutants are defective only in the establishment or maintenance of primary dormancy. At least one of these may be tagged with T-DNA. In addition, about 50 RGM isolates have been recovered from EMS-treated seed