Browsing by Subject "Oxygen within seed embryo"

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    Effects of seed coating on germination and early seedling growth in cereals
    (2014) Gorim, Linda Yuya; Asch, Folkard
    Grain cereals such as barley, rye, wheat or sorghum, constitute a major share in human diet worldwide. Climate change threatens cereal production systems due to emerging unreliable rainfall patterns and thus, renders crop production vulnerable to early season failure of crop establishment. Breeding drought tolerant genotypes is a long and complicated process, thus not suited to respond to environmental changes quickly but rather to address the problem in a longer time frame. Seed coats increasing water availability to the seed and enhancing early vigor of the seedling may be a better short term solution. Seed coats containing hydro-absorbers such as Stockosorb® or Geohumus® can improve water availability and in combination with other substances for example humic acids or plant fortifiers such as Biplantol® may improve early vigor. However, very low germination rates have been observed in seeds coated in this way resulting in slow adoption of seed coating technology in agriculture. The present study analyzed the effects of seed coating on germination, which seed coat composition can enhance germination rate and early vigor and why, the effects of seed coat on germination and seed physiology, and which influence seed coats containing different kinds of hydro-absorbers have on the drought resistance of seed during germination. Studies were conducted on barley, rye, and wheat seeds. In these species the mode of action of differently composed seed coats and the effects of differences in seed coat strength were studied whereas the studies on drought resistance were performed with sorghum seeds. The following results were obtained and submitted for international publication: 1) Seed coating in general reduced germination rates as compared to uncoated seeds. Seed coating thickness was the determining factor. With a share of the seed coat of 75% of the total grain (seed + seed coat) germination was very little affected by coating. However, smaller seed coat shares and particularly shares smaller than 50% of the total grain severely reduced germination rate. This effect was especially pronounced in wheat. 2) With seed coat shares larger than 75% and the coats dotted with different substances generally resulted in high germination rates. However, strong genotypic effects were observed in responses of seed physiology and dry matter partitioning to the different substances included in the coat, with barley generally responding positively, rye intermediate and in wheat generally the weakest effects were observed. Across genotypes Biplantol included in the coat mainly promoted shoot growth, humic acid increased root growth and hydro-absorbers mainly the rate of germination and early vigour. Due to those results only seed coated with hydro-absorber containing coat and with coat not smaller than 75% were used for all following studies. 3) Seedlings growing from coated seeds with coat shares > 75% showed accelerated early seedling growth with strongly reduced respiratory losses during the mobilization of endosperm reserves, combined with significantly increased mobilisation efficiency in all three cereals. Analyses showed that the sucrose metabolism and thus the availability of glucose as energy provider for growth differed strongly between coated and uncoated seeds as well as among the cereal species. Embryos from coated seed (particularly in barley and wheat) seemed to grow better with significantly less glucose indicating a chance in the enzymatic cleavage of sucrose that could only be due to the higher energy efficiency of the enzyme sucrose synthase. 4) Studies during germination in sensu stricto (the first 48h hours after soaking) showed that in the embryos of coated seeds conditions were hypoxic with oxygen concentrations of less than 5% of atmospheric oxygen as compared to 60-80% oxygen of atmosphere in embryos of uncoated seeds. From this it was deduced that the lower respiratory losses during germination of coated seeds are due to a switch in sugar metabolism from invertase based cleavage of sucrose to sucrose synthase based cleavage of sucrose which is the less energy demanding pathway in the near absence of oxygen. 5) A last study on drought resistance of coated seed whose coats comprised two different hydro-absorbers (Stockosorb or Geohumus) showed that the drought responses of coated seed differed little form uncoated seeds. However, seedling growth under both drought and fully watered conditions was affected by the type of hydro-absorber in the coat. Whereas Stockosorb promoted rather root growth,Geohumus enhanced shoot growth. In conclusion, it can be stated that seed coats investigated in this study in general promoted germination rate and success in cereals if the seed coat has the appropriate strength i.e. coat shares not below 75% of total grain. Additives such as Biplantol or humic acid promote vigour and influence dry matter partitioning in favour of specific organs which could be employed as management options during germination. It was shown that seed coats influence the germination and seedling metabolism und induce hypoxic conditions in embryonic tissue which shift the sugar metabolism to a more energy efficient pathway. Oxygen dynamics in the different seed tissues require further studies and need to be better understood in order to employ the positive effects of seed coating in a targeted and species-specific approach to improve and enhance crop establishment particularly in drought prone cereal production systems. Another future pathway could be including nutrients in the coat that promote early seedling growth and for systems threatened by early drought spells or unreliable rainfall a seed coat that would conduct water to the seed only after soil moisture has surpassed a given threshold and thus induces germination only when water availability is optimal.