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Old August 5, 2018   #7
carolyn137
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Upstate NY, zone 4b/5a
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ContainerTed View Post
Great article. It made me wonder whether we could introduce artificial components to extremely old seeds and get better germination results.

Ahhhhh. To dream.

Maybe one day mankind will know how to do this and it will make all our efforts to save these varieties successful. We will have fruits from seeds placed in time capsules.

Ahhhhh. To dream.
I too enjoyed it and reread it since I've been off line for a bit,but here's what is of concern to me

(The surprising propagation and diversification of flowering plants in terrestrial environments are mainly due to the appearance of seeds during evolution. The embryo, which is dormant, is encapsulated and protected in a very resistant structure, which facilitates its dispersion. At this stage, it cannot perform photosynthesis and, during germination, it will thus consume the nutritive reserves stored in the seed. This process induces the transformation of a strong embryo into a fragile seedling. "This is a critical stage in the life of a plant, which is closely regulated, notably by the growth hormone gibberellic acid (GA). The production of this hormone is repressed when external conditions are unfavorable," explains Luis Lopez-Molina, Professor at the Department of Botany and Plant Biology of the UNIGE Faculty of Science.)

It was all about FLOWERING PLANTS in a Terrestrial environment. No mention was made at all about the kind of seeds that were being used,none at all and that's critically important.

That's not good enough for at least me knowing that different seeds can and do require different methods such as scarification,,etc..

Ted, you asked about germinating OLD seeds and yes there are ways for doing that that I have discussed before, and so has Craig L when he was a more active participant here or now that I think of it it was actually just the two of us doing the experiments. Yes, one other method was adding nitrates to the rehydration water.And that's the method I've posted here at Tville several times.

Giberellic Acid in the article was one method Craig and I used to see if old seeds could be induced to germinate,another method we used was Microwave. And always using proper controls each time we did something. There was also another method we used but I can't remember it now.

Old seeds are dehydrated so the first thing that has to be done is to rehydrate them and I posted many times here at Tville what I do to accomplish that.

Carolyn
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