Outbreak of caprine abortion by Toxoplasma gondii in Midwest Brazil

An outbreak of abortion by Toxoplasma gondii in goats on a farm in the Brazilian Midwest is reported. Gross lesions were not observed in seven aborted fetuses submitted to the Veterinary Pathology Laboratory, Federal University of Mato Grosso, for necropsy investigation. The main histologic lesions were mononuclear cell pneumonia and necrotizing encephalitis in varying degrees of intensity. PCR for Brucella abortus and Neospora caninum and aerobic cultures were negative in all cases. Antibody titles against T. gondii varying from 1:1024 to 1:32.768 were detected in serum samples from four aborted goats. Nested-PCR assay for T. gondii were positive in brain samples of all cases submitted. These findings indicate that T. gondii infection should be considered in the diagnosis of abortion in goats in Midwest Brazil.

Molecular characterization of group A bovine rotavirus in southeastern and central-western Brazil, 2009-2010

Rotavirus is an important cause of neonatal diarrhea in humans and several animal species, including calves. A study was conducted to examine 792 fecal samples collected from calves among 65 dairy and beef herds distributed in two of Brazil's major livestock producing regions, aiming to detect the occurrence of rotavirus and perform a molecular characterization of the rotavirus according to G and P genotypes in these regions. A total of 40 (5.05%) samples tested positive for rotavirus by the polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) technique. The molecular characterization was performed by multiplex semi-nested RT-PCR reactions, which indicated that the associations of genotypes circulating in herds in Brazil's southeastern region were G6P[11], G10P[11], G[-]P[5] + [11], G[-]P[6] in the state of São Paulo and G6P[11], G8P[5], G11P[11], G10P[11] in the state of Minas Gerais. In the central-western region, the genotypes G6P[5] + [11], G6P[5], G8P[-], G6P[11], G [-] P[1], G[-] P[11], and G[-] P[5] were detected in the state of Goiás, while the genotypes G6P[5], G8[P11], G6[P11], G8[P1], G8[P5], G6[P1] were circulating in herds in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. The genotypic diversity of bovine rotavirus found in each region under study underlines the importance of characterizing the circulating samples in order to devise the most effective prophylactic measures.

Ocorrência de Mollicutes e Ureaplasma spp. em surto de doença reprodutiva em rebanho bovino no Estado da Paraíba

Em março de 2012 foi diagnosticado um surto de doença reprodutiva em rebanho bovino no Estado da Paraíba, Brasil. Foram examinadas 32 vacas e dois touros da raça Girolando. As vacas apresentaram sinais de doença reprodutiva como repetição de cio, vulvovaginite granular, infertilidade e abortos. As amostras de suabes vaginais e prepuciais foram colhidas e submetidas a isolamento bacteriano e PCR. As reações da PCR para Mollicutes e Ureaplasma spp. foram realizadas com os iniciadores MGSO-GPO3 e UGP'F-UGP'R, respectivamente. Na Nested PCR para Ureaplasma diversum, os iniciadores usados foram UD1, UD2, UD3 e UD4. Para isolamento bacteriano, as amostras foram diluídas de 10-1 até 10-5, semeadas em meio "UB", líquido e placa, sendo incubadas por até 21 dias a 37ºC em jarra de microaerofilia. A frequência de Mollicutes detectada na PCR foi de 65,6% e para Ureaplasma spp. foi de 50,0%, enquanto que para U. diversum foi de 15,6%. No isolamento a frequência de Mollicutes foi de 57,1% e para Ureaplasma spp. foi de 28,6%. No ágar "UB" foi visualizado o crescimento misto de Mycoplasma spp. e Ureaplasma spp. em seis amostras. Foi confirmado o envolvimento de micro-organismos da Classe Mollicutes em surto de doença reprodutiva em vacas no sertão paraibano.

Surto de encefalomielite equina Leste na Ilha de Marajó, Pará

Nove casos de encefalomielite equina foram estudados na Ilha de Marajó, estado do Pará, Brasil. Os equinos apresentavam dificuldade em se manter em estação, andavam em círculo, tinham acentuada depressão, pálpebras cerradas, paralisia da língua, tremores musculares, bruxismo, anorexia e desidratação. Alguns apresentavam diminuição dos reflexos auricular, palpebral, de ameaça, diminuição do tônus da língua e taquicardia. Posição de auto-auscultação foi observada com frequência. Os animais muitas vezes eram encontrados apoiados em troncos e cercas para se manterem em estação. À necropsia verificou-se hemorragia das leptomeninges e da medula, alguns apresentaram ainda aderência das leptomeninges. À histopatologia verificou-se encefalite difusa que afetava principalmente a substância cinzenta, com meningite e coroidite. Foi observada perivasculite mononuclear. Em dois equinos identificou-se o vírus da encefalomielite equina Leste pela reação de Semi-Nested transcrição reversa de polimerase em cadeia (Semi-Nested RT-PCR).

Diarrhea outbreaks in suckling piglets due to rotavirus group C single and mixed (rotavirus groups A and B) infections

Porcine group A rotavirus (PoRVA) is a major cause of neonatal diarrhea in suckling and recently weaned piglets worldwide. The involvement of non-group A rotavirus in cases of neonatal diarrhea in piglets are sporadic. In Brazil there are no reports of the porcine rotavirus group C (PoRVC) as etiologic agent of the diarrhea outbreaks in piglets. The aim of this study was to describe the identification of rotavirus group C in single and in mixed infection with rotavirus groups A and B in three neonatal diarrhea outbreaks in suckling (<21-day-old) piglets, with 70% to 80% and 20% to 25% of morbidity and lethality rates, respectively, in three pig herds located in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The diagnosis of PoRV in the diarrheic fecal samples was performed using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) to identify the presence of porcine rotavirus groups A, B (PoRVB), and C, and by RT-PCR (PoRVA and PoRVC) and semi-nested (SN)-PCR (PoRVB) to partially amplify the VP4 (VP8*)-VP7, NSP2, and VP6 genes of PoRVA, PoRVB, and PoRVC, respectively. One RT-PCR (PoRVA and PoRVC) and SN-PCR (PoRVB) product of each group of rotavirus of each diarrhea outbreak was submitted to nucleotide (nt) sequence analysis. Based on the PAGE technique, 4 (25%) and 1 (6.25%) of the 16 diarrheic fecal samples evaluated in the first outbreak presented PoRVA and PoRVC electropherotype, respectively, and 11 (68.75%) were negative. In the second outbreak, 3 (42.85%) of the 7 fecal samples evaluated presented PoRVA electropherotype, and in 3 (42.85%) and in 1 (14.3%) fecal samples were detected inconclusive and negative results, respectively. Three (30%) of the 10 fecal samples of the third outbreak presented PoRVC electropherotype; 5 (50%) and 2 (20%) samples showed negative and inconclusive results, respectively. Based on the RT-PCR and SN-PCR assays in the first neonatal diarrhea outbreak, PoRVC was detected in 13 (81.2%) of the 16 diarrheic fecal samples evaluated. PoRVC single infection was identified in 4 (25%) of these samples and mixed infections with PoRVA and PoRVB in 9 (56.2%) fecal samples. All of the seven diarrheic fecal samples evaluated from the second neonatal diarrhea outbreak were positive for PoRVC, whereas its mixed infection with other PoRV groups was detected in 4 (57.2%) samples. In the third outbreak, PoRVC in single infection was detected in all of the 10 diarrheic fecal samples analyzed. In the nt sequence analysis, the PoRVA strains of the first and second outbreaks demonstrated higher nt identity with G4P[6] and G9P[23] genotypes, respectively. The PoRVB strains (first and second outbreaks) and the PoRVC strains (first, second, and third outbreaks) showed higher nt identity and clustered in the phylogenetic tree with PoRVB and PoRVC strains that belong to the N4 and I1 genotypes, respectively. This is the first description in Brazil of the involvement of PoRVC in the etiology of diarrhea outbreaks in suckling piglets. The results of this study demonstrated that PoRVC, in both single and mixed infections, is an important enteropathogen involved in neonatal diarrhea outbreaks in piglets and that the use of more sensitive diagnostic techniques allows the identification of mixed infections involving two or even three groups of PoRV, which may be more common than previously reported.

Ocorrência da infecção por Cryptosporidium spp. em cabritos (Capra hircus)

O presente estudo teve como objetivo determinar a ocorrência da infecção por Cryptosporidium spp. em cabritos de Quixadá, Ceará, Brasil. Participaram do estudo 400 cabritos, com idade entre três e 360 dias, de ambos os sexos, com e sem padrão racial definido, procedentes de 25 estabelecimentos rurais distribuídos em três circuitos. As fezes foram cadastradas de acordo com o aspecto e cor, distribuídas em tubos tipo "eppendorf®" e congeladas in natura a -20°C, até o momento das extrações de DNA genômico do parasito com auxílio de kit comercial. Para amplificação de fragmentos da subunidade 18S do RNA ribossômico (rRNA) foi utilizada a "Nested"-PCR. A ocorrência de Cryptosporidium spp em cabritos de Quixadá foi de 7,50% (30/400). A frequência no período seco e no chuvoso foi de 9,55% (19/199) e 5,47% (11/201), respectivamente (χ²=2,39 e P>0,05). Amostras positivas foram identificadas em 64,00% (16/25) das propriedades estudadas e dessas amostras 50,00% (15/30) e 70,00% (21/30) tinham as fezes com aspecto e cor normais, respectivamente, sugerindo que cabritos assintomáticos estão eliminando oocistos. Não foi observada positividade para Cryptosporidium spp. em animais com 301 a 360 dias, demonstrando que animais mais velhos apresentam menos possibilidade de se infectarem com o parasito.

Occurrence of Mycoplasma synoviae on commercial poultry farms of Pernambuco, Brazil

The state of Pernambuco is the largest producer of eggs in the North and Northeast of Brazil and second one in the broiler production. Mycoplasmas are important avian pathogens, which cause respiratory and joint diseases that result in large economic losses. The aim of the present study was to investigate the occurrence of Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) and Mycoplasma synoviae (MS) in broilers and commercial laying hens in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil. Tracheal fragments were analyzed from 55 healthy broilers, 35 broilers with respiratory signs and 30 commercial laying hens with respiratory signs, from 24 commercial poultry farms, each sample was composed of a pool of five birds. The bacteriological exam, PCR and nested PCR were used for the detection of Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) and Mycoplasma synoviae (MS). All samples were negative in bacteriological isolation. In the PCR analyses, seven samples from birds with respiratory signs were positive for MS and one was positive for MG, the latter of which was confirmed as the MG-F vaccine strain. The occurrence of MS in chickens with respiratory signs may indicate inadequate sanitary management on poultry farms, favoring the propagation of mycoplasmosis.

Reproductive efficiency of asymptomatic Theileria equi carriers mares submitted to an embryo transfer program

This study aimed to assess and evaluate the effects of Theileria equi infection on embryonic recovery, gestation and early embryonic loss. Thirteen Mangalarga Marchador Theileria equi positive donors (diagnosed through nested-PCR) and 40 embryos receptors were used. Donors were submitted to two embryo collections in two consecutive estrous cycles (GId); after, the same mares were treated with imidocarb dipropionate (1.2mg/kg IM.) in order to collect more embryos in two more estrous cycles (GIId). Receptors were divided into two groups (control and with treated) with 20 animals each, where one group was the control (GIr) and the other one (GIIr) treated with 1.2mg/kg IM of imidocarb dipropionate assessing the gestation rate at 15, 30, 45 and 60 days. After 52 embryo collections, the embryonic recovery rates were 53.84% (14/26) and 65.38% (17/26) (p> 0.05) for GId and GIId, respectively. The gestation rate was 70% (14/20) (p>0.05) at 15, 30, 45 and 60 days in group GIr and for GIIr was 85% (17/20) (p>0.05) at 15 days, 80% (16/20) (p>0.05) at 30, 45 and 60 days. The treatment with imidocarb dipropionate did not cause significant improvement in the reproductive efficiency at an ET program.

Molecular survey of porcine teschovirus, porcine sapelovirus, and enterovirus G in captive wild boars (Sus scrofa scrofa) of Paraná state, Brazil

AbstractPorcine teschovirus (PTV), porcine sapelovirus (PSV), and enterovirus G (EV-G) are infectious agents specific to pig host species that are endemically spread worldwide. This study aimed to investigate the natural infection by these porcine enteric picornaviruses in wild boars (Sus scrofa scrofa) of Paraná state, Brazil, and to evaluate peccaries (Pecari tajacu and Tayassu pecari) as alternative host species for these viruses. Fecal samples (n=36) from asymptomatic wild boars (n=22) with ages ranging from 2 to 7 months old (young, n=14) and 2 to 4 years old (adult, n=8) and from peccaries (6 to 8 months old, n=14) were collected from a farm and a zoo, respectively, both located in Paraná state. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and nested-PCR (n-PCR) assays targeting the 5'non-translated region of the virus genome were used for screening the viruses. Porcine enteric picornaviruses were detected in 12 out of the 22 wild boar fecal samples. According to each of the viruses, EV-G was most frequently (11/22, 50%) detected, followed by PTV (10/22, 45.5%) and PSV (4/22, 18.2%). Regarding the age groups, young wild boars were more frequently (9/14, 64.3%) infected with PTV, PSV, and EV-G than adult animals (3/8, 37.4%). One n-PCR amplified product for each of the viruses was submitted to sequencing analysis and the nucleotide sequences were compared with the related viruses, which showed similarities varying from 97.7% to 100% for PTV, 92.4% to 96.2% for PSV, and 87.1% to 100% for EV-G. Peccaries tested negative for the viruses and in this study they did not represent infection reservoirs. This study is the first to report the molecular detection of PTV, PSV, and EV-G from captive wild boars in a South American country and the first to screen peccaries as alternative host species for porcine enteric picornavirus.

Video transcoding in a distributed cloud computing environment

Video transcoding refers to the process of converting a digital video from one format into another format. It is a compute-intensive operation. Therefore, transcoding of a large number of simultaneous video streams requires a large amount of computing resources. Moreover, to handle di erent load conditions in a cost-e cient manner, the video transcoding service should be dynamically scalable. Infrastructure as a Service Clouds currently offer computing resources, such as virtual machines, under the pay-per-use business model. Thus the IaaS Clouds can be leveraged to provide a coste cient, dynamically scalable video transcoding service. To use computing resources e ciently in a cloud computing environment, cost-e cient virtual machine provisioning is required to avoid overutilization and under-utilization of virtual machines. This thesis presents proactive virtual machine resource allocation and de-allocation algorithms for video transcoding in cloud computing. Since users' requests for videos may change at di erent times, a check is required to see if the current computing resources are adequate for the video requests. Therefore, the work on admission control is also provided. In addition to admission control, temporal resolution reduction is used to avoid jitters in a video. Furthermore, in a cloud computing environment such as Amazon EC2, the computing resources are more expensive as compared with the storage resources. Therefore, to avoid repetition of transcoding operations, a transcoded video needs to be stored for a certain time. To store all videos for the same amount of time is also not cost-e cient because popular transcoded videos have high access rate while unpopular transcoded videos are rarely accessed. This thesis provides a cost-e cient computation and storage trade-o strategy, which stores videos in the video repository as long as it is cost-e cient to store them. This thesis also proposes video segmentation strategies for bit rate reduction and spatial resolution reduction video transcoding. The evaluation of proposed strategies is performed using a message passing interface based video transcoder, which uses a coarse-grain parallel processing approach where video is segmented at group of pictures level.

Outcome of human papillomavirus infection among men in the Finnish Family HPV Study

Ihmisen papilloomaviruksen taudinkuva suomalaisperheiden seurantatutkimuksen mieskohortissa Tieto ihmisen papilloomaviruksen (HPV) yhteydestä eri anatomisten alueiden sairauksien syntyyn on lisännyt mielenkiintoa miehen papilloomavirustulehduksen taudinkulun selvittämiseksi. Tämä väitöskirjatyö on osa suomalaista seurantatutkimusta, jossa tutkitaan HPVinfektioiden tartuntareittejä 329 perheessä. Väitöstyössä keskitytään tutkimukseen osallistuneiden 131 miehen aineistoon. Suun limakalvonäytteet otettiin seitsemässä aikapisteessä. Lisäksi otettiin sukuelinalueen näytteet kahdella seurantakäynnillä. Riskitekijöitä kartoittava kyselytutkimus teetettiin tutkimuksen alkutilanteessa sekä viimeisellä seurantakäynnillä. Oireettomat HPV infektiot olivat alkutilanteessa yleisiä molemmilla sukupuolilla (miesten suu 18,3 % ja sukuelinalue 35,9 %, naisten suu 17,2 % ja kohdunsuu 18,8 %), mutta HPV:n genotyyppien vastaavuus partnerien välillä oli vähäinen. Naisen, mutta ei miehen, seksuaalinen riskikäyttäytyminen oli yhteydessä pariskunnan HPV tyyppien vastaavuuteen. Partnerin ja siviilisäädyn vaihtaminen lisäsivät miehen riskiä saada uusia HPV infektioita. Miehen suun limakalvonäytteistä löytyi kaikkiaan 17 eri HPV tyyppiä. Suun HPV-tulehduksen esiintyvyys vaihteli eri aikapisteissä 15 %:sta 31 %:iin. Uusien HPV tulehdusten ilmaantumisaika vaihteli 3,9 ja 25,7 kuukauden välillä. Suun HPV infektio parani valtaosalla miehistä. Suun krooninen HPV-infektio todettiin 14 %:lla miehistä. Näiden infektioiden keskimääräinen kesto vaihteli 6.0:sta 30.7:ään kuukauteen. Tupakointi lisäsi korkean riskin HPV tyyppien aiheuttamien suun kroonisten infektioiden riskiä, kun taas aikaisemmin sairastetut sukuelinten kondyloomat suojasivat siltä. Tuloksemme osoittavat, että miehen oireeton HPV tulehdus on yleinen suussa ja sukuelinten alueella. Vakaa parisuhde suojaa uusilta HPV tulehduksilta. Tupakoinnilla on keskeinen merkitys suun HPV-infektion kroonistumisessa.

Biomedical Event Extraction with Machine Learning

Biomedical natural language processing (BioNLP) is a subfield of natural language processing, an area of computational linguistics concerned with developing programs that work with natural language: written texts and speech. Biomedical relation extraction concerns the detection of semantic relations such as protein-protein interactions (PPI) from scientific texts. The aim is to enhance information retrieval by detecting relations between concepts, not just individual concepts as with a keyword search. In recent years, events have been proposed as a more detailed alternative for simple pairwise PPI relations. Events provide a systematic, structural representation for annotating the content of natural language texts. Events are characterized by annotated trigger words, directed and typed arguments and the ability to nest other events. For example, the sentence “Protein A causes protein B to bind protein C” can be annotated with the nested event structure CAUSE(A, BIND(B, C)). Converted to such formal representations, the information of natural language texts can be used by computational applications. Biomedical event annotations were introduced by the BioInfer and GENIA corpora, and event extraction was popularized by the BioNLP'09 Shared Task on Event Extraction. In this thesis we present a method for automated event extraction, implemented as the Turku Event Extraction System (TEES). A unified graph format is defined for representing event annotations and the problem of extracting complex event structures is decomposed into a number of independent classification tasks. These classification tasks are solved using SVM and RLS classifiers, utilizing rich feature representations built from full dependency parsing. Building on earlier work on pairwise relation extraction and using a generalized graph representation, the resulting TEES system is capable of detecting binary relations as well as complex event structures. We show that this event extraction system has good performance, reaching the first place in the BioNLP'09 Shared Task on Event Extraction. Subsequently, TEES has achieved several first ranks in the BioNLP'11 and BioNLP'13 Shared Tasks, as well as shown competitive performance in the binary relation Drug-Drug Interaction Extraction 2011 and 2013 shared tasks. The Turku Event Extraction System is published as a freely available open-source project, documenting the research in detail as well as making the method available for practical applications. In particular, in this thesis we describe the application of the event extraction method to PubMed-scale text mining, showing how the developed approach not only shows good performance, but is generalizable and applicable to large-scale real-world text mining projects. Finally, we discuss related literature, summarize the contributions of the work and present some thoughts on future directions for biomedical event extraction. This thesis includes and builds on six original research publications. The first of these introduces the analysis of dependency parses that leads to development of TEES. The entries in the three BioNLP Shared Tasks, as well as in the DDIExtraction 2011 task are covered in four publications, and the sixth one demonstrates the application of the system to PubMed-scale text mining.

Spatial variation in the structure and floristic composition of "restinga" vegetation in southeastern Brazil

We examined large-scale spatial variation of structural parameters and floristic composition in open Clusia scrub, a vegetation type of the Brazilian "restingas" (sandy coastal plain vegetation). This vegetation is organized in islands separated by sandy stretches with sparse herbaceous vegetation. We located 12 sample areas on three consecutive beach ridges, lying parallel to the coastline and at different distances from the ocean, in close proximity to two lagoons (Cabiúnas and Comprida). Each sample area was divided into three strips. We used the line intercept method to sample all woody plants ³ 50 cm tall. We used nested ANOVA to verify structural variation between different sampling scales. TWINSPAN analysis was performed to examine the variation in floristic composition between areas. The overall diversity index was 3.07. Six species are repeatedly dominant throughout the entire sampling area. There was homogeneity in relation to diversity and species richness between beach ridges but not within beach ridges. Floristic composition and structural parameters did not vary in relation to distance from the sea but floristic composition did vary as a function of proximity to Cabiúnas or Comprida lagoon. Differences in plant cover between sample areas may be related to the paleoformation of this sandy coastal plain.

Cost-efficient virtual machine management : provisioning, admission control, and consolidation

One of the main challenges in Software Engineering is to cope with the transition from an industry based on software as a product to software as a service. The field of Software Engineering should provide the necessary methods and tools to develop and deploy new cost-efficient and scalable digital services. In this thesis, we focus on deployment platforms to ensure cost-efficient scalability of multi-tier web applications and on-demand video transcoding service for different types of load conditions. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds provide Virtual Machines (VMs) under the pay-per-use business model. Dynamically provisioning VMs on demand allows service providers to cope with fluctuations on the number of service users. However, VM provisioning must be done carefully, because over-provisioning results in an increased operational cost, while underprovisioning leads to a subpar service. Therefore, our main focus in this thesis is on cost-efficient VM provisioning for multi-tier web applications and on-demand video transcoding. Moreover, to prevent provisioned VMs from becoming overloaded, we augment VM provisioning with an admission control mechanism. Similarly, to ensure efficient use of provisioned VMs, web applications on the under-utilized VMs are consolidated periodically. Thus, the main problem that we address is cost-efficient VM provisioning augmented with server consolidation and admission control on the provisioned VMs. We seek solutions for two types of applications: multi-tier web applications that follow the request-response paradigm and on-demand video transcoding that is based on video streams with soft realtime constraints. Our first contribution is a cost-efficient VM provisioning approach for multi-tier web applications. The proposed approach comprises two subapproaches: a reactive VM provisioning approach called ARVUE and a hybrid reactive-proactive VM provisioning approach called Cost-efficient Resource Allocation for Multiple web applications with Proactive scaling. Our second contribution is a prediction-based VM provisioning approach for on-demand video transcoding in the cloud. Moreover, to prevent virtualized servers from becoming overloaded, the proposed VM provisioning approaches are augmented with admission control approaches. Therefore, our third contribution is a session-based admission control approach for multi-tier web applications called adaptive Admission Control for Virtualized Application Servers. Similarly, the fourth contribution in this thesis is a stream-based admission control and scheduling approach for on-demand video transcoding called Stream-Based Admission Control and Scheduling. Our fifth contribution is a computation and storage trade-o strategy for cost-efficient video transcoding in cloud computing. Finally, the sixth and the last contribution is a web application consolidation approach, which uses Ant Colony System to minimize the under-utilization of the virtualized application servers.

Multiple dormancy and maternal effect on Miconia ferruginata (Melastomataceae) seed germination, Serra de Caldas Novas, Goiás, Brazil

Species with mostly asexual reproduction are interesting subjects for germination studies since variation would be more easily linked to environmental factors. Miconia ferruginata DC. is an apomictic treelet in Brazilian cerrado areas on rocky outcrops. Germination of seeds collected from individuals occurring in the Serra de Caldas Novas State Park, Goiás, was studied in three experiments under controlled conditions. Germination characteristics differed among individuals and were correlated with altitude and soil Al content. Seeds from plants growing at lower altitudes, with lower soil aluminium content, presented malformed seeds with absence of embryo which rendered lower, but better synchronized germination. The nested analysis showed that from the total variance, 78.14% for germinability, 54.56% for uncertainty of the germination process, and 68.30% for the quantity of seeds without embryo was attributed to the altitudinal effect. Individuals nested within altitude contributed up to 16.93% for the total variance. It means that there is low variability among individuals of the same altitude and high variability among individuals from different points of the slope, making clear that for the studied population the environmental effect is stronger than the genetic component to determine the seed quality. The testa of the seeds provides a mechanical dormancy which seems to be associated also with phenolic compounds, which help to disperse germination through time. Photoblastism was also registered for seeds of this species.