Composition and physicochemical properties of outer mucilage from seeds of Arabidopsis natural accessions.

Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) seeds are myxospermous and release two layers of mucilage on imbibition. The outer layer can be extracted with water facilitating the analysis of its major constituent, polysaccharides. The composition and properties of outer mucilage have been determined for 306 natural accessions and six control genotypes to generate a data set comprising six traits measured in four biological replicates for each. Future exploitation of this data is possible in a range of analyses and should yield information concerning genetic diversity, underlying genetic factors and the biological function of mucilage as an adaptive trait.