Drying banana seeds for ex situ conservation.

ABSTRACT: The ability of seeds to withstand drying is fundamental to ex situ seed conservation but drying responses are not well known for most wild species including crop wild relatives. We look at drying responses of seeds of Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, the two primary wild relatives of bananas and plantains, using the following four experimental approaches: (i) We equilibrated seeds to a range of relative humidity (RH) levels using non-saturated lithium chloride solutions and subsequently measured moisture content (MC) and viability. At each humidity level we tested viability using embryo rescue (ER), tetrazolium chloride staining and germination in an incubator. We found that seed viability was not reduced when seeds were dried to 4% equilibrium relative humidity (eR

SUBMITTER: Kallow S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9041424 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature