Agriculture - the Quality of Seeds

As one of the foremost and basic input in agriculture, the quality of seeds must be maintained to maximize crop production and to ensure genetic conservation for future use. To fulfill its role as a germplasm, seeds must possess characteristics, such as appropriate moisture content and viability which is the ability of a seed to successfully germinate and grow normally and denotes the seed’s state of being alive and active. Seed germination is referred to as the process in which seed starts to develop into a new plant under favorable conditions. It can be indicated by emergence of just the radicle or all the essential parts of a newly-germinated seed. Germination usually starts once dormancy is broken. Dormancy is the physical or physiological stage of a viable seed that hinders germination. Such phenomena can be caused by exogenous factors such as the seed’s hard coating and also by endogenous factors such as the presence of chemical inhibitors. Seed dormancy naturally prevents pre-harvest germination or vivipary. Despite this, farmers and other people in the field of crop production often perceive dormancy as a problem since it delays crops’ growth which is unfavorable because it leads to a reduction of yield in a given time span. Because of this, several methods are done to break seed dormancy in order to resume growth or germination.

To preserve the initial viability and quality of a seed, they are stored until the time of planting. Recalcitrant and orthodox seeds are the two seed types according to storage behavior. Recalcitrant seeds, which are mostly from fruit crops, must be