Studies were conducted to determine the relationship between weedy Setaria faberi seed dormancy and subsequent behaviors in the soil culminating in seedling recruitment.This is the first in a series of three articles demonstrating weedy Setaria seed dormancy capacity heterogeneity at abscission (seed heteroblasty) provides a “blueprint” for those subsequent behaviours. The objective for this present article was to provide a robust characterization of seed heteroblasty at the time of dispersal for 39 locally adapted S. faberi populations, as influenced by parental genotype (time of embryogenesis) and environment (year, location). The heteroblastic structure of each population was revealed by the germination response to increasing amounts of after-ripening (in “ideal” conditions). The majority of the populations were differentiated from each other; this variation indicated a fine scale adaptation to different local environments.Taken together, the 39 responses represented Setaria’s “seed dormancy phenotype space” and revealed three different generalized dormancy patterns. The first pattern, low dormancy populations, had high initial germination in response to low doses of after-ripening. The second, high dormancy populations, had no or low initial germination with little additional response to increased after-ripening. Most populations had the third pattern, intermediate to the others, with low initial germination and increasing germination with increasing after-ripening dose. Germination responses were also used to rank populations based on their dormancy level to facilitate later comparisons with emergence behavior. Heteroblasty at abscission, elucidated herein, is hypothesized to influence subsequent seed fates in the soil, the focus of the next two articles in this series.