Storage behaviour and seed longevity of traditional African vegetables: a review

Abstract

Effective management of seed collections in genebanks requires knowledge of seed storage behaviour and species-specific longevity under conventional air-dry storage. This knowledge is lacking for traditional African vegetable (TAV) crops compared to cereals and conventional vegetables. This review aimed to assess the published literature until December 2023. The findings will guide post-harvest seed processing (cleaning and drying), storage (containers, storage parameters), viability monitoring and regeneration intervals, and to identify further research gaps that will inform data needs from the genebanks conserving TAV seeds. Our findings show that, compared to cereals and legumes, there is limited information available on vegetable crops and more acutely on TAVs. While conventional vegetable seeds benefited from research on their storage behaviour and longevity, there was significant neglect of TAV crops, which represented only 17% of the studies reviewed. Overall, genebanks involved in TAV germplasm conservation should invest more time and resources to investigate seed physiology and generate data that will inform on the storage behaviour and longevity of these crops under medium and long-term storage conditions. Such data are important to establish crop-specific knowledge on optimal conditions for high post-harvest seed quality, and for genebanks to plan seed regeneration.