Seed-to-plant-tracking: automated phenotyping of seeds and corresponding plants of Arabidopsis

Plants adapt seed traits in response to different environmental triggers, supporting the survival of the next generation. To elucidate the mechanistic understanding of such adaptations it is important to characterize the distributions of seed traits by phenotyping seeds on an individual scale and to correlate these traits with corresponding plant properties. Here we introduce a seed-to-plant-tracking pipeline which enables automated handling and high precision phenotyping of Arabidopsis seeds as well as germination detection and early growth quantification of emerging plants. It includes previously published measurement platforms (phenoSeeder, Growscreen), which were improved for very small seeds. We demonstrate the performance of the pipeline by comparing seeds from two consecutive generations of elevated temperature during flowering with control seeds. Relative standard deviation of repeated seed mass measurements was reduced to 0.2%. We identified an increase in seed mass, volume, length, width, height, and germination time as well as a darkening of the seeds under the treatment. A correlation analysis revealed relationships between seed and plant traits, e.g., a highly significant negative correlation between seed brightness and germination time, and a positive correlation between seed mass and early growth rate, but no correlation between time of emergence and morphometric seed traits (e.g., mass, volume). Thus, the seed-to-plant tracking provides the basis for investigating the mechanism of seed and plant trait variation and transgenerational inheritance.