Abstract
Seed priming is a treatment that controls seed water content to partially activate germination processes such as metabolism but prevents full germination of the seeds. The treatment is well known to enhance seed performance, including germination, but sometimes reduces seed storability or longevity as a side effect. Toward developing a novel priming technique that can maintain seed longevity for a longer time period, chemicals that suppress the seed deterioration under a controlled condition were screened from 80 known biologically active compounds contained in the RIKEN NPDepo authentic library using Arabidopsis thaliana seeds. Seeds primed with mimosine, a cell cycle inhibitor, retained higher survival rate after a controlled deterioration treatment compared to seeds primed without the chemical. In addition, other cell cycle inhibitors such as aphidicolin, hydroxyurea and oryzalin had similar effects on the seed storability after priming. Our results suggest that progression of the cell cycle during priming is an important checkpoint that determines the storability of seeds after the treatment.
Highlights
Germination, often defined as the protrusion of part of the embryo from the surrounding endosperm and/or seed coat due to elongation of embryonic cells, is triggered by imbibition of dry seeds
In order to assess the effects of priming on seedling establishment behavior in more detail, the growth curves of nonprimed and primed seeds were fitted using four-parameter hill function (FPHF) (El-Kassaby et al 2008) and parameters of seedling establishment were estimated (Fig. 1a, b)
We discovered that a cell cycle inhibitor, mimosine, prevented the seed deterioration after a priming treatment (Fig. 2)
Summary
Germination, often defined as the protrusion of part of the embryo from the surrounding endosperm and/or seed coat (testa) due to elongation of embryonic cells, is triggered by imbibition of dry seeds. Hydropriming is a simple and the most traditional type of priming during which seeds are soaked in water under an optimal temperature (usually in the range from 5 to 20 °C depending on species and cultivars) for a defined period. Imbibition at a suboptimal (high or low) temperature before sowing promotes germination depending on the plant species and is referred to as thermopriming. Non-controlled water up-take by seeds with hydropriming or thermopriming sometimes causes uneven hydration, which results in non-synchronous germination (McDonald 2000). In contrast to hydropriming and thermopriming that do not limit water uptake into seeds,
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