Determining Genome Size from Spores of Seedless Vascular Plants.

Seedless vascular plants, including ferns and lycophytes, produce spores to initiate the gametophyte stage and to complete sexual reproduction. Approximately 10% of them are apomictic through the production of genomic unreduced spores. Being able to measure the spore nuclear DNA content is therefore important to infer their reproduction mode. Here we present a protocol of spore flow cytometry that allows an efficient determination of the reproductive modes of seedless vascular plants.