The influence of substrates rates on the germination characteristic of a soil seed bank

Abstract

Soil seed bank (SSB) is considered as an important way of vegetation restoration, it can fleetly achieved vegetation diversification and the course of succession when the topsoil mixed with planting substrates. In this paper, a greenhouse germination method was used to explore the effect on germination characteristic of soil seed bank by adding different inorganic substrates, such as activated carbon, perlite and vermiculite. The results showed that perlite and vermiculite can effectively promote the germination of soil seed bank, but also significantly promote Shannon-Wiener diversity index. When vermiculite mixed with the topsoil in 40%, the germination effect of soil seed bank was more obviously than other groups; at this time, the density of soil seed bank reached 6 X 105 plants/m2, Shannon Wiener diversity index reached 1.4354. Therefore, it was more conducive to improve the soil seed bank density and species diversity by adding 40% vermiculite in the topsoil.