Breeding for Improved Nutrition: A Seed Scientist's Perspective.

Plant breeders are making important progress towards more nutritious grain and oil seeds. However, they may not be aware of the detrimental impact of some of these changes on the physiological health of the seed.  Seed composition, genetic background, and environment influence seed quality. Plant breeders selecting for improved seed composition seldom monitor their cultivars for improved seed quality traits. Up to date, there has been little collaboration between plant breeders and seed scientists to ensure that these changes do not affect the emergence and establishment of the crop.  Many of the poor seed quality characteristics that breeders are selecting against in the field might be, in fact, poor handling of the seed at harvest. We will present results from our research collaborations and discuss our findings which corroborate that selecting cultivars for high seed quality early in the breeding program is beneficial and important for improving germination and field performance.