Significance of Nondestructive and Physiological Seed Vigor Tests

The performance of current seed-vigor test methods finds a means to assess a single seed's vigor without harming it by using chemometrics algorithms and seed physiological changes.

FREMONT, CA: Seed vitality is an essential part of agricultural research. Seeds will lose their strength over time. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are the leading cause of oxidative damage, which destroys chemicals in seeds and eventually kills them. Most of the time, traditional vigor tests, like the seed germination test and the TTC staining, are used to measure the strength of a seed. But these methods often need a lot of test samples, which wastes seeds. There are many new ways to test the vigor of seeds that are fast and don't hurt the seeds, like vibrational spectroscopic techniques. With hyperspectral imaging technology (HSI), spectral integration examines test data more thoroughly and improves findings.

Seeds are the most crucial portion of a crop's life cycle and the foundation of agricultural science's technical measures. Grain and agriculture output must remain steady because of population expansion and COVID-19 outbreaks. Seed germination and vigor determine crop yield. Internal regulation or environmental factors usually decrease seed vigor. Despite proper storage, seedlings lose vigor, which leads to seed aging. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) may cause physiological changes, seed vigor loss, and death. Several ROS outbreaks damage cell lipids, proteins, and genes, disrupting their functions. New scientific and technological procedures and classification algorithms are fast, simple, damage-free, and accurate compared to classic.

Damaged membrane lipids produce lipid peroxide molecules, which modify membrane permeability and decrease seed vigor. Nutrients in the membrane that promote plant growth may enter the matrix and impact seed physiological activity. Cells need proteins. Oxidative damage to seeds may be persistent if ROS modify proteins. Modified proteins accumulate and disrupt cell function. Seeds' genes control their physiological state based on environmental factors. ROS buildup disrupts gene expression and kills seeds. New seed-vigor analysis researchers may find the above adjustments puzzling. The classic seed-vigor test is simple, accurate, stable, and intuitive, but it requires more experimental samples and wastes them.

The goal is to describe the continuous physiological process of seed-vigor deterioration, explore the reasons for seed germination loss, and provide a biological basis for and understand the nondestructive test of seed vigor. Low-vigor seeds may produce aberrant seedlings or nongerminating seeds, wasting human resources and money. A reasonable and adequate seed-vigor screening technology can test and reject low-vigor or dead seeds to increase agricultural productivity. It is a fundamental technical approach for product quality testing for procedures like the seed-vigor test, seed mildew test, and others since it is objective, reproducible, onsite, and requires little pretreatment.