Abstract:

Most plants invest the greater part of their effort in tissues and organs (sinks) that are important for their long-term survival. Fruits and seeds represent such organs and they are considered as permanent, irreversible sinks. In contrast to temporary sinks, the plant cannot retrieve the invested storage materials from fruits and seeds because they abscise from the mother plant. Developing fruits and seeds are usually strong sinks, exhibiting a very high amount of assimilate import. The amount of storage material that the plants invest in seeds is huge. Thus it is not surprising that approximately 70% of all food for human consumption comes from seeds, mostly cereals (“endospermic seeds”) and legumes (“nonendospermic seeds”) (Bewley and Black, 1985). © 1995 by Marcel Dekker. All rights reserved.

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