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Seed Information Database (SID)

SID's internet search screen

SID is a compilation of seed biological trait data from the MSBP’s own collections and from other published and unpublished sources. Its primary purpose is as an internal source of a variety of seed biological information; for use in ± large scale analysis and decision support for seed conservation operations.

In addition, and importantly, having gathered the data, we share it with users worldwide via RBG Kew’s external website and ePIC, with logged web searches and downloads as an indicator of usage (http://www.kew.org/data/sid/).

The main functional traits or characters of interest are concerned with seed desiccation tolerance, longevity, germination and dormancy; together with physical (e.g. mass) and chemical (e.g. oil content), morphological (including high quality images) and some ecological data, such as dispersal mode and parent plant life-form.

The treatment of seed morphology and anatomy is based on standardised descriptions of seed morphology for selected species from MSB Project collections, including high quality digital images of several standard views. At present, species selection for coverage is based on taxonomy, i.e. Kew and MSB special interest groups (e.g. Rubiaceae, Arecaceae, Fabaceae), and seed biology functional groups (e.g. underdeveloped embryos).

Comparative analyses seek broad, predictive relations with a range of physical, chemical, structural and ecological variables, and associated hypothesis generation. Where appropriate, correlations are analysed against the background of the phylogenetic classification of seed plants. Delivery via the web has led to a number of international collaborations to carry out large-scale analyses of the dataset(s). Examples of analyses leading to significant scientific publications are listed in Annex 1.

A recent major enhancement has been the addition of a module that allows users to perform web-based calculations on aspects of seed storage longevity, based on the well-known Seed Viability Equations, and using the compilation of species’ seed viability constants and oil contents to be found in SID. We are about to add a module on species that have been categorised as halophytes (i.e. salt tolerant) by Aronson (1984) including the level of salinity tolerated and photosynthetic pathway(s). This has resulted from collaboration and data sharing with Prof. Tim Flowers, University of Sussex.

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