Figure 1. There is variation in variability in germination times in Arabidopsis.

(A) Examples of distributions of germination time for natural accessions and MAGIC lines. Each row shows the germination time distribution of a seed batch from a different parent plant of a particular line, and colours represent whether the line is a Spanish accession (purple), MAGIC parental accession (yellow) or MAGIC line (blue). The size of the circles is proportional to the percentage of seeds sown that germinated on a given day. For the two groups of accessions (Spanish accessions and MAGIC parents), examples of the lowest and highest variability lines are shown. For MAGIC lines, examples are shown of low variability (top two lines); high variability, long-tailed (middle two lines) and very high variability bimodal (bottom two lines) lines. (B) Frequency distribution of coefficient of variation (CV) of germination times for 10 Spanish accessions (purple), the 19 parental natural accessions that were used to generate the MAGIC lines (orange) and 341 MAGIC lines (blue). In the majority of cases, the CV of a given MAGIC line is the mean of the CVs of three batches of seeds collected from separate parent plants. (C) CV of germination times for a subset of 32 MAGIC lines in two separate experiments. The batches of seeds for the two experiments were derived from different independently sown mother plants. The line shows y = x and is for visualisation purposes only (i.e., it does not represent a trend line). Figure 1—figure supplement 1 shows the level of reproducibility of germination time distributions across replicates, lengths of period of dry storage and sowing conditions. Figure 1—source data 1 contains source data for (A). Figure 1—source data 2 contains source data for (B). Figure 1—source data 3 contains source data for (C).

Figure 1—figure supplement 1. Reproducibility of germination time distributions.

(A, B) Coefficient of variations (CVs) of germination time for MAGIC parental accession seeds stored in dry conditions for different lengths of time following harvest (x and y axes labels indicate time of storage). Each point represents a different MAGIC parental accession and is the mean CV across three replicate batches of seeds, each collected from a different parent plant. The black lines show y = x to aid data visualisation (they do not represent models fitted to the data). The experimental comparisons are for 16 (A) and 12 (B) of the MAGIC parental accessions. For (A), Pearson’s r = 0.77 (95% CI [0.44, 0.91]). For (B), Pearson’s r = 0.76 (95% CI [0.32, 0.93]). (C–F) Germination time distributions of the very high variability MAGIC lines shown in Figure 1C. Each row shows the germination time distribution of a seed batch from a different parent plant. Each colour represents seeds collected and sown in a single experiment, with different colours representing different replicate experiments from different parental sowings. The size of the circles is proportional to the percentage of seeds that germinated on a given day. M101 and M174 showed a very late germinating fraction of seeds in some experiments but not others, whilst bimodal distributions were more consistently detected for M182 and M178. (G) Distributions of germination times on soil for genotypes that were either high or low variability when sown on Petri dishes. Within an experiment, lines that were more variable on plates were also more variable on soil, with the exception of M311. Figure 1—figure supplement 1—source data 1 contains source data for (A) and (B). Figure 1—figure supplement 1—source data 2 contains source data for (C–F). Figure 1—figure supplement 1—source data 3 contains source data for (G).