1Division of Vegetable Science, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Shalimar-190 025, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, (India)
2Division of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Shalimar-190 025, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, (India)
Division of Post Harvest Technolog, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Shalimar-190 025, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, (India)
*E-mail: drkhan_387@skuastkashmir.ac.in
Online published on 23 March, 2017.
Seed vigour is an important quality parameter of seeds quality and plays an important role in the production of agronomic and horticultural crops. In order to enable the farming community to get superior seeds their quality in terms of viability, germinability and vigour need to be evaluated to gain insight into the performance of a seed lot in the field or in storage. However, seed quality declined during field weathering, harvesting and/or storage and results in a serious economic loss. Through knowing the sources and mechanism of the loss, seed quality deterioration may be at least reduced or slowed down if not completely stopped. Besides the field management strategies, seed quality can also be improved through various seed priming techniques. Testing of seed vigor to predict the seed performance under a wide range of environment s is also an important issue. The present article describes about the various types of seed deterioration taking place and different priming techniques used to improve the vigor of normal as well as poor or deteriorated seeds. In addition, the present review also reports about the available vigor testing techniques.
Ageing, deterioration, priming, seed quality and vigor
