The 12th Triennial Conference of the International Society for Seed Science was held in Monterey, CA, USA, September 10-14. The overarching theme of the conference was: “Seeds as Systems”. This Special Issue is a reflection of the scope of the conference, as well as its diversity in topics. The main aim of this issue was to collect Review Papers based on the keynotes that were given in each session. This aim was largely achieved and, therefore, this issue contains eight reviews on such diverse topics as morpho-atanomy of physical dormancy, the theory of biological variation, seeds and fungi, regulation of seed dormancy by nitrate, multispectral imaging, the translational machinery in seeds, soil seed bed engineering and seed bank pathogens. This diversity echoes the science and research dynamics of our community, ranging from applied aspects concerning seed quality to fundamental and theoretical backgrounds of seed performance. The former is, additionally, served by three research paper dealing with various aspects of seed quality. Finally, I believe a first of its kind in our journal is a Short Communication on educational aspects for early career seed scientists.

I hope you appreciate our efforts and read (and cite!) the papers of this issue. Finally, I want to thank the Associate-Editors, the many reviewers and the Production Staff at CUP who made this Special Issue happen.