The effects of humidification treatments on viability and the accumulation of chromosomal-aberrations in pea-seeds

Abstract

The effectiveness of humidification treatments to ameliorate any damage caused by either ageing or imbibition damage during standard germination tests of pea seeds were examined in this study. It was confirmed here that poststorage humidification treatments conducted on pea cv. 'Kelvedon Wonder' avoided imbibition injury. This study also showed that humidification at 20-degrees-C could only be used for non-aged (high viability) pea seeds and that 16-degrees-C was the optimum temperature for the humidification of aged pea seeds since it provided a slow initial water uptake to the seeds. In addition, the optimum moisture content to be reached was determined as 16.3-18.1% in aged pea seeds. Furthermore, there was generally a considerable decrease in each type of chromosomal abberrations after humidification treatments and the greatest reduction was observed in chromatid-type abberrations.