Treatment to Break Dormancy in Seeds
Some of the different treatments to defeat dormancy are further divisible into the following groups:
Embryo Treatments
- Stratification: The incubation of seeds at a suitable low temperature over a moist layer before conveying them to a temperature worthy of germination.
- High-temperature treatment: Incubation at 40-50° C for a few hours to a few days may result in defeating dormancy in some species. For example, rice seeds are treated with hot water at 40° C for at least 4 hours.
Seed Coat Treatment
The seed coat treatment makes hard seed coats permeable to water or gases either by cracking or softening. This process is known as scarification. The treatment can be in the nature of chemical or physical.
Chemical Treatments
Plant growth regulators or other chemicals can be used in induced germination growth controllers.
Seed Dormancy
Growth is an increase in the size or weight of a cell, organ, or organism. An increment in size can occur without growth as absorption of water by a flaccid cell. In a similar manner, during the germination of a seed, there is an actual fall of dry weight though the size and fresh weight increase. So, growth is explained as a permanent or irreversible increase in dry weight, mass, or volume of a cell, size, organ, or organism. Plant growth occurs in three Phases – formative, enlargement, and differentiation. The formative phase has also termed the phase of cell formation or cell division or meristematic phase. The enlargement phase is also known as the phase of cell elongation and the differentiation phase is also known as the phase of maturation.