Seed biology and technology: At the crossroads and beyond. Introduction to the Symposium on Seed Biology and Technology: Applications and Advances and a prospectus for the future

Abstract

The papers in this special section ofSeed Science Researchare products of a symposium on Seed Biology and Technology: Applications and Advances, held in Fort Collins, Colorado, on 13–16 August, 1997. The symposium was convened as a cooperative effort of Regional Research Project W-168 within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Cooperative States Research, Extension and Education Service (CSREES) system. Regional Research Projects are authorized by the Hatch Act, which established the Agricultural Experiment Station (AES) system in the United States (US Code). This is a system in which land-grant institutions in each state conduct research and education programmes relevant to agriculture, the environment and society. Regional Research projects are a mechanism ‘for cooperative research in which two or more State agricultural experiment stations are cooperating to solve problems that concern the agriculture of more than one state.’ Such projects ‘can provide the solution to a problem of fundamental importance or fill an important gap in our knowledge from the standpoint of the present and future agriculture of the region’