Application of laser biospeckle analysis for assessment of seed priming techniques

Abstract: Seed priming is one of the well-established and low cost method to improve seed germination properties, productivity, and stress tolerance in different crops. It is a pre-germination treatment that partially hydrates the seed and allows controlled imbibition. This stimulates and induces initial germination process, but prevents radicle emergence. Consequently, treated seeds are fortified with enhanced germination characteristics, improved physiological parameters, uniformity in growth, and improved capability to cope up with different biotic and abiotic stresses. Existing techniques for evaluating the effectiveness of seed priming suffer from several drawbacks, including very high operating time, indirect and destructive analysis, bulky experimental arrangement, high cost, and require extensive analytical expertise. To circumvent these drawbacks, we propose a biospeckle based technique to analyse the effects of different priming treatments on germination characteristics of seeds. The study employs non-primed (T0) and priming treatments (T1-T75), including hydropriming and chemical priming (using three chemical agents namely sodium chloride, potassium nitrate, and urea) for different time durations and solution concentrations. The results conclusively establish biospeckle analysis as an efficient active tool for seed priming analysis. Furthermore, the proposed setup is extremely simple, low-cost, involves non-mechanical scanning and is highly stable.