Flowering and fruiting are the key processes in the biology of higher plants that ensure the transfer of genetic material from one generation to the next. Furthermore, almost the whole of the world's agricultural and horticultural industries depend upon the production of flowers, fruits and seeds, and so the reproductive biology of cultivated plants is of fundamental importance to humankind. However, it is surprising that compared with studies on the growth and development of vegetative structures, reproductive biology seems to have received somewhat less attention from environmental physiologists.

Previous meetings of the Environmental Physiology Group of the Society for Experimental Biology have considered various aspects of vegetative growth in some detail and these have resulted in SEB Seminar Series publications on The Control of Leaf Growth (Cardiff Meeting, 1984), Root Development and Function (Bangor Meeting, 1985) and on Plant Canopies (Nottingham Meeting, 1986). It thus seemed timely to devote a meeting to various aspects of reproductive growth and development and so this became the subject of the 1990 meeting of the Environmental Physiology Group at the Society's annual conference at University of Warwick. It was agreed from the outset that this topic should be approached on a broad front, from the onset of flowering to the development and growth of fruits and seeds, and finally to ecological and evolutionary aspects of fruiting. Thus future meetings of the Group can focus more narrowly on topics such as seed growth and development.