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The ever increasing interest in protection forest plantations in Brazil for restoration of degraded areas imposes substantial changes in the form of dealing with tree species, as compared with the traditional plantations for industrial production. Important concepts relating to the structure and functioning of tropical forests are important for the establishment of mixed forests with indigenous species.
In this manner, seed production of indigenous species for the purpose of revegetating degraded areas must comply with the high diversity of species of the natural tropical forest, as well as the form in which the individuals of the species occur in the forest. The separation of species into ecological groups according to secondary succession seems to be an adequate manner of solving the problem, since the different groups present very distinct characteristics with regard to seed production.
A number of other aspects could be considered in discussing the revegetation and seed production theme, such as plant x animal interaction, sampling for seed collection in natural populations, seed technology, and many others not approached in this paper.
The lack of scientific information on the subject, resulting mainly from non-priority which the indigenous species held up to a short time ago under our conditions, as well as the high number of species which normally occur in tropical forests, result in that many gaps exist in this knowledge and urgent steps should be taken towards the advance of this area.