Impacts of priming on seed germination and seedling emergence of Cleistogenes songorica under drought stress
Cleistogenes songorica is an important native grass in northern China mainly used for regeneration of degraded land and in the grass-livestock industry. However, it is sensitive to drought stress during germination and early growth stages. Seed priming is a good approach to enhance
germination and seedling establishment under stress conditions. Laboratory, greenhouse and field experiments were conducted to investigate the role of hydropriming, osmopriming and spermidine priming in enhancing germination, emergence and drought tolerance of C. songorica. Drought
stress led to decreased germination and emergence, poor seedling growth, higher levels of lipid peroxidation and reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation. However, all seed priming treatments assuaged the detrimental effects of drought stress. Such improvements were associated with lower
lipid peroxidation and generation of ROS (H2O2 content), and greater antioxidant enzyme activity in primed seeds under drought. Furthermore, an increase in the nuclear DNA contents of seeds from 2C to 4C occurred during priming, indicating progression from the G1
to G2
phase of cell cycle, the positive effect of priming was closely related to the percentage of cells at the G2
stage of the cell cycle and to the G2
/G1
ratio.
Keywords: CELL CYCLE; CLEISTOGENES SONGORICA; KEYWORD S: ANTIOXIDANT ENZYME ACTIVITY; PRIMING; SEED GERMINATION; SEEDLING EMERGENCE
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 July 2018
This article was made available online on 03 June 2018 as a Fast Track article with title: "Impacts of priming on seed germination and seedling emergence of Cleistogenes songorica under drought stress".
- Seed Science and Technology (SST) is one of the leading international journals featuring original papers and review articles on seed quality and physiology as related to seed production, harvest, processing, sampling, storage, distribution and testing. This widely recognised journal is designed to meet the needs of researchers, advisers and all those involved in the improvement and technical control of seed quality.
- Editorial Board
- Information for Authors
- Membership Information
- Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content