Relationship of Seedling Vigor to Respiration and Tetrazolium Chloride Reduction by Germinating Wheat Seeds¹

Abstract

The effects of age and size of seed on seedling vigor, rate of respiration, and 2,3,5‐triphenyl‐2H‐tetrazolium chloride (TTC) reduction by germinating seeds were studied in the laboratory. Wheat seed (Triticum aestivum ssp. compactum (Host) MacKey ‘Elmar’) was used. Stratification was necessary to eliminate the effect of dormancy in the youngest seed class. Significant positive correlations were found between rate of emergence and vigor (ability to emerge from deep seeding), emergence and rate of respiration, and between vigor and both tetrazolium reduction and rate of respiration for seed of different ages. With different seed size classes, significant positive correlations were found between seed weight and tetrazolium reduction, and between shoot weight per plot and tetrazolium reduction. In a preliminary test, varietal differences in seedling vigor, which were largely due to relative coleoptile elongation, were not correlated with TTC reduction. The possible place of TTC reduction as an empirical seedling vigor test and respiration of germinating seeds as a component of vigor are discussed.

Predicting potential field seedling vigour of Canadian six-row barley cultivars

“…Woodstock and Grabe (1967) reported a correlation of 0.96 between oxygen uptake of imbibed barley seeds and shoot length of 5-d-old seedlings, and were able to relate seedlot differences to the effects of particular stresses experienced by specific seedlots. A similar relationship between oxygen consumption and potential seedling size was also demonstrated by Kittock and Law (1968), with wheat, and Bishnoi (1971) with cotton, but this approach was not used to identify cultivar differences. This technique can be modified to measure CO 2 evolution instead of oxygen use, when applied to germinating seeds which still lack green tissue.…”

“…One candidate technique is tetrazolium chloride staining (Kittock and Law 1968), widely applied in the seed industry for viability testing, and adapted as a quantitative method for selecting for low-temperature vigour in spring wheat by Johnston et al (1986). This technique has been successfully applied in rice by Sung and Chen (1988) who were able to identify cultivar vigour differences, with correlations as high as 0.9 between the TZ assay value and seedling dry weight when germinated at 10°C.…”

Changes of enzymes activities in botanical treated aged seed of soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) cv. CO 3 seeds

“…Five days aged seed soybean seeds were treated with ball milled seed powders of fenugreek seed powder, ashwagandha leaf powder, tea leaf powder and noni leaf powder, ball milled for 1 h and shaken for 60 min @ 2 g kg -1 . Seeds were evaluated for biochemical analysis viz., electrical conductivity (dSm -1 ) (Presley, 1958), protein content (%) (Ali -Khan and Youngs, 1973), oil content (%) (Sadasivam and Manickam, 1995) and dehydrogenase activity (OD value) (Kittock and Law, 1968), free fatty (%) (Christiansen and Moore, 1961), catalase activity (µg H 2 O 2 mg -1 min -1 ) (Povolotskaya and Sedenka, 1956), peroxidase activity (OD 10 min -1 ) (Malik and Singh, 1980), lipid peroxidation (OD value) (Bernheim et al, 1948) and lipoxygenase (g mol s -1 mg -1 ) (Hildebrand et al, 1991) were conducted. The field emergence was observed at 8 th and 14 th day.…”

Prediction of storability in soybean seeds through accelerated ageing technique [Glycine max (L.) Merill]

“…The dehydrogenase enzyme was determined as per the procedure described by Kittock and Law, 1968. Here, twenty five representative seeds from each treatment in two replications were taken and preconditioned by soaking in water overnight at room temperature.…”