Consumption of wheat seed reserves during germination and early growth as affected by soil water potential

Abstract

Seed size and weight are important criteria for determining seedling vigour and stand establishment. Evolution of seed dry weight of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) during germination and early growth was examined because poor stands are often associated with the depletion and exhaustion of seed reserves. Two laboratory experiments were conducted on filter paper and in soil at three water potentials using wheat seeds. Seed, root, and shoot dry weights were recorded at approximately one-day intervals. Coleoptile and first leaf lengths were also measured at all sampling periods. Wheat seedlings grown on filter paper in the dark grew to a length of 90 to 100 mm with 50% of the initial seed weight remaining after eight days when the experiment was terminated. In soil, wheat seedlings grew 15 mm with 25% of the initial seed weight remaining. Seed reserves were depleted more quickly when the soil was wet because seedlings grew more quickly. There were significant and similar negative relationships between seed weight and coleoptile length of wheat seedlings grown on filter paper and in soil. There was no effect of soil water potential on the relationship between seed weight and shoot length. Therefore, it was concluded that poor wheat stands are not likely to occur due to depletion of seed reserves under field conditions without mechanical obstacles.

Effect of salt stress (sodium chloride) on germination and seedling growth of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) genotypes

“…Salinity as a non live stress makes many hardships for seed in germination period either by limiting water absorption by the seeds (Dodd and Donovan, 1999), by affecting the mobilization of stored reserves *Corresponding author. E-mail: ayedsourour@yahoo.fr Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License (Bouaziz and Hicks, 1990;Lin and Kao, 1995) or by directly affecting the structural organization or synthesis of proteins in germinating embryos (Ramagopal, 1990). These parameters could be affected by both the ionic and the osmotic components of salt stress although the relative importance of each component differs among species and even among cultivars (Dodd and Donovan, 1999;Davenport et al, 2005).…”

Efeito do tamanho das sementes de trigo no desenvolvimento inicial das plantas e no rendimento de grãos

“…A massa seca da semente é considerada uma boa estimativa da quantidade de reservas disponíveis às plantas, de acordo com Bouaziz & Hicks (1990). Nas sementes utilizadas, ela variou de 26,8 mg (diâ-metro menor que 3,0 mm) a 52,3 mg por semente (diâmetro maior que 3,75 mm) (Tabela 1), valores próximos aos das sementes utilizadas por Grieve & Francois (1992) (23,2 mg e 49,1 mg por semente).…”

The effects of NACL, KCL and MGCL2 on the germination of Brassica rapa var. parachinensis seed

“…Salt stress inhibits seed germination by limiting water absorption by the seeds (Dodd and Donovan, 1999). In addition, salt stress affects the mobilization of stored reserves (Bouaziz and Hicks, 1990) and the structural organization or synthesis of protein in germination embryos (Foolad and Lin, 1997; Machado Neto et al,…”