Evolutionary pathways to lower biomass allocation to the seed coat in crops: insights from allometric scaling
2024
Milla, Rubén | Westgeest, Adrianus, J | Maestre-Villanueva, Jorge | Núñez-Castillo, Sergio | Gómez-Fernández, Alicia | Vasseur, François | Violle, Cyrille | Balarynová, Jana | Smykal, Petr | Universidad Rey Juan Carlos = Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC) | Département Biologie et Ecologie ; Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Montpellier (ENSA M) | Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE) ; Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 (UPVM)-École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) ; Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD [Occitanie])-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Institut Agro Montpellier ; Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro)-Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro)-Université de Montpellier (UM) | Palacky University Olomouc | This study was supported by grants PID2021-122296NB-I00 (Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain), RED2022-134917-T (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain), REMEDINAL TE (Comunidad de Madrid), 24-10730S (Grant Agency of the Czech Republic), PrF-2023_001, and PrF-2024-001 (Grant Agency of Palacky University).
Corresponding Author: Rubén Milla ([email protected])
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Show more [+] Less [-]English. Crops generally have seeds larger than their wild progenitors´ and with reduced dormancy. In wild plants, seed mass and allocation to the seed coat (a proxy for physical dormancy) scale allometrically so that larger seeds tend to allocate less to the coats. Larger seeds and lightweight coats might thus have evolved as correlated traits in crops. We tested whether 34 crops and 22 of their wild progenitors fit the allometry described in the literature, which would indicate co‐selection of both traits during crop evolution. Deviations from the allometry would suggest that other evolutionary processes contribute to explain the emergence of larger, lightweight‐coated seeds in crops. Crops fitted the scaling slope but deviated from its intercept in a consistent way: Seed coats of crops were lighter than expected by their seed size. The wild progenitors of crops displayed the same trend, indicating that deviations cannot be solely attributed to artificial selection during or after domestication. The evolution of seeds with small coats in crops likely resulted from a combination of various pressures, including the selection of wild progenitors with coats smaller than other wild plants, further decreases during early evolution under cultivation, and indirect selection due to the seed coat‐seed size allometry.
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