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CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 117, NO. 9, 10 NOVEMBER 2019 1531 *For correspondence. (e-mail: [email protected]) resulting seeds. Another study on other species also showed that nitrogen concentration of seeds did increase in response to maternal nutrient status. In this study, correlation analysis of two nutrient treatments showed that the number of pods per plant was significantly negatively correlated with the mean number of seeds per pod. This result indicates that there was a trade-off between pod size and the number of seeds rather than between seed size/mass and the number of seeds. This result disagrees with that reported by Wulff, who found no correlation between mean seed mass per plant and total number of seeds produced per plant. The numbers of pods and seeds are affected by environmental conditions during flowering, seed set and genetic factors. The present results imply that reproductive characters were significantly affected by nutrient treatments. Seed mass is much less influenced by soil nutrient conditions than the number of pods and number of seeds per pod. Both germination percentage and germination rates are affected by seed mass. The nitrogen concentration showed a significant increase in the seed in response to an increase in the parental nutrient status. In addition, poor growth of V. grandiflora seedlings under low nutrient conditions indicates that this species is not tolerant of infertile soils.