Plant embryonic development

Plant embryonic development is the sequence by which a fertilized egg becomes an embryo inside a seed. It establishes the embryo’s body axes, shoot and root poles, and foundational tissues.

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Zygote polarization: The establishment of an asymmetric axis in a newly formed zygote. It gives the first plant embryo its apical and basal directions.
Plant zygote: The diploid cell formed when a plant egg cell fuses with a sperm cell. It is the single-cell starting point for embryonic development.
Arabidopsis thaliana: A small flowering plant widely used as a model organism in genetics and developmental biology. Its embryos are central to modern studies of plant development.
Seed development: The growth and maturation of a seed after fertilization, including embryo formation and seed filling. Embryogenesis is the embryo-forming phase within the broader development of a seed.
Animal embryonic development: The development of an animal embryo from a fertilized egg through early body-plan formation. Plant embryos develop within seeds and rely on cell walls rather than animal-style cell rearrangements.
Asymmetric cell division: A cell division that produces daughter cells with different sizes, contents, or developmental fates. The first unequal division partitions the embryo from its suspensor.
Plant cell polarity: The asymmetric organization of a plant cell’s molecules, structures, or developmental properties. Polarity helps orient the earliest divisions and embryo axes.
Arabidopsis embryogenesis: The staged development of an Arabidopsis embryo from fertilized egg to mature seed embryo. Its reproducible cell patterns provide a standard account of embryonic stages.
Seed maturation: The late phase of seed development when embryos accumulate reserves and acquire desiccation tolerance. It prepares the formed embryo to survive drying and resume growth.
Apomixis: Asexual seed formation that produces offspring without fertilization. It can form seed embryos without the fertilized egg that initiates ordinary embryogenesis.