How and why to measure the germination process

By M. Ranal, D. G. Santana. 2006

879 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In the last two centuries, papers have been published including measurements of the germination process. High diversity of mathematical expressions has made comparisons between papers and some times the interpretation of results difficult. Thus, in this paper is included a review about measurements of the germination process, with an analysis of the several mathematical expressions included in the specific literature, recovering the history, sense, and limitations of some germination measurements. Among the measurements included in this paper are the germinability, germination time, coefficient of uniformity of germination (CUG), coefficient of variation of the germination time (CVt), germination rate (mean rate, weighted mean rate, coefficient of velocity, germination rate of George, Timsons index, GV or Czabators index; Throneberry and Smiths method and its adaptations, including Maguires rate; ERI or emergence rate index, germination index, and its modifications), uncertainty associated to the distribution of the relative frequency of germination (U), and synchronization index (Z). The limits of the germination measurements were included to make the interpretation and decisions during comparisons easier. Time, rate, homogeneity, and synchrony are aspects that can be measured, informing the dynamics of the germination process. These characteristics are important not only for physiologists and seed technologists, but also for ecologists because it is possible to predict the degree of successful of a species based on the capacity of their harvest seed to spread the germination through time, permitting the recruitment in the environment of some part of the seedlings formed.

Subfields: Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aac77b1088f22f53040e0547a70e76020f658f6a

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Citations in the corpus

Genetic mapping within the wheat D genome reveals QTL for germination, seed vigour and longevity, and early seedling growth (2009, methodology): “MGT (mean germination time), MGR (mean germination rate, an estimation of germination speed) and CVt (coefficient of variation of the germination time, an estimation of the degree of synchronicity of germination, with lower CVt values indicating greater synchronicity) were calculated following Rana”
How to analyse seed germination data using statistical time-to-event analysis: non-parametric and semi-parametric methods (2012, methodology): “Germination indexes have been reviewed by Scott et al. (1984), Brown and Mayer (1988a) and Ranal and Santana (2006).”
A Quantitative Assessment of Germination Parameters: the Case of Crotalaria Persica and Tephrosia Apollinea (2016, methodology): “As Timson’s germination index (TGI) has been widely used (Rincker, 1983; Pammenter et al., 1984; Brown & Mayer, 1988; Ranal & Santana, 2006), the correlations were assessed between TGI against each of the other six indices: G, CVG, GRI, GI, MGT and MGR.”
Early bird catches the worm: germination as a critical step in plant invasion (2016, background): “These traits are useful to estimate the dynamics and outcomes of the germination process (Ranal and Santana 2006), are relatively easy to measure, and allow the collection of information for many species over a relatively short period (Dürr et al. 2015).”
Hydro-priming Effects on Seed Germination and Field Performance of Faba Bean in Spring Sowing (2019, methodology): “Low values of synchronization index (SI) indicate more synchronized germination [32]. vii) Seedling vigor index (SVI) was estimated as per Equation (7): Vigor testing does not only measure the percentage of viable seed in a sample, but also reflects the ability of those seeds to produce normal…”