Potential of a single radicle emergence count in predicting field emergence of Desi chickpea seed lots as an alternative vigour test

Abstract

Single early counts of radicle emergence (RE) is a validated vigour test for four crop species. We performed this study to see whether an early radicle emergence (RE) count predicts the emergence of seedlings in Desi chickpea seed lots as well as an electrical conductivity (EC) test. Electrical conductivity measurements of 11 seed lots were highly predictive of field emergence (FE) (R2 = 0.626**). The radicle emergence was counted at regular time intervals of six hours, up to 72 hours after imbibition. Mean germination time (MGT) clearly predicted variation in number of seedlings in the field. This evidence supports the idea that the variation in the germination time between seed lots can be an early indicator of seed vigour. Early RE counts at 48 hours also had a high coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.764***) with FE. The negative correlation between EC and the single early count of RE at different germination times indicated that the two tests identified the same differences in vigour. The strong relationships between RE at 48 hours with both EC and FE supports the proposal that a single count of RE could be an alternative vigour test for Desi chickpea.

Hydrotime Model Parameters Estimate Seed Vigor and Predict Seedling Emergence Performance of Astragalus sinicus under Various Environmental Conditions

“…Seed vigor is an important aspect of seed quality [14]; it is defined as the sum of the properties of the seed that determine the level of activity and the performance of a seed or seed lot during germination and seedling emergence [15]. Previous research has suggested the presence of a positive linear relationship between seed vigor and seedling emergence in the field [16,17]. Tao et al found that there was an advantage in using high-vigor CMV seeds to achieve better seedling emergence, whereas low-vigor seeds caused limited seedling emergence [18].…”

Correlation of photosynthetic pigments content with indicators of seed quality in the seeds of carrot, celery, dill, parsley, and parsnip

“…The radicle emergence (RE) test is simple method, which is indicative of the percentage of normal seedlings that is closely related to the germination speed index (GSI). The RE has been applied to a wide range of species such as Allium ampeloprasum (Ermis et al, 2015), Cicer arietinum (Akbarpour et al, 2019), or Lepidium sativum (Demir et al, 2019) and is an ISTA-validated as a vigour test for Zea mays (Matthews et al, 2011), Brassica napus (Powell et al, 2014), Raphanus sativus Mavi, 2016), andTriticum aestivum (Khajeh-Hosseini et al, 2019).…”