Environmental and genetic maternal effects on seed characters in Nemophila menziesii

Seeds produced by N. menziesii mothers competing with Bromus diandrus showed a significant reduction in weight, increase in time to germination, and increase in the incidence of dormancy, compared to seeds from mothers grown singly. Significant sire components were found for time to germination and incidence of dormancy. Maternal genetic variation for seed weight was largely expressed as maternal genotype by maternal environment interaction, and showed no significant maternal genetic main effect. Time to germination and dormant fraction showed a relatively large maternal genetic effect. -from Authors