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Biophysical Aspects of Seed Ageing (Orthodox Seeds)

Seeds in vials as part of an experiment to test seed ageing

This project is one in a series in the theme of 'Science of Seed Ageing'.

It is well known that seeds from different species show wide variation in longevity during dry-storage. Whilst it is possible to carry out germination tests and ageing experiments to assess the potential longevity of a collection, these tests are destructive, may require large numbers of seeds, and can be time-consuming. Ideally, we would like to have a non-destructive, diagnostic marker which will give an indication of the quality of a particular seed-lot and how long viability might be maintained during long-term storage.

Thermal methods such as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), and isothermal microcalorimetry (IMC), have been used to look at storage stability in the food and pharmaceutical industries, and have been considered to a lesser extent, in seed science. For example DSC traces may give an indication of the extent of lipid changes during seed ageing and IMC has been used to measure very low levels of heat flow as a consequence of metabolic activity in biological samples. The aim of this project is to explore the application of thermal methods for predicting the longevity of seeds.

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