Hatching Grass Seeds in Water with Elevated Levels of Dissolved Oxygen

Abstract

Background: Food security in sustainable food production aims to ensure that all people have access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food and maintain the balance of the ecosystem and the efficiency in agriculture. For instance, globally, approximately 1.3 billion tons of food are lost or wasted each year that not only leads to substantial economic losses but also contributes to approximately 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in serious environmental harm. Therefore, efficiency in agriculture must be continuously modernized to optimize resources and get closer to the goals of producing more food by reducing significantly the consumption of energy, water, and agrochemicals. One of the areas where we must move forward is in the mysteries of seed germination. Seed germination that begins with water imbibition and ends with radicle emergence is the first step for plant growth. Successful germination is not only crucial for seedling establishment but also important for crop yield. After being dispersed from mother plant, seed undergoes continuous desiccation in ecosystem and selects proper environment to trigger germination. The hatching of seeds has been extensively studied, but despite the remarkable efforts of researchers, the role of pigments in the logic of the chemical sequence of the seed has been overlooked. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the omnipresence of pigments throughout the process, and to concatenate the hitherto unsuspected role of pigments in the initial phases of seed hatching. Methods: Grass seeds were placed in water with minimum dissolved oxygen levels of 6.5 mg/L. and the changes in subsequent hours were photographically recorded. Results: The first phase of seed hatching occurred as expected according to our working hypothesis. Conclusion: The already well described germination-changes including morphological changes, cell and its related structure recovery, metabolic activation, hormone behavior, and transcription and translation activation, inevitably require water imbibition as very first step. But the water that soaks the seed should ideally contain high levels of dissolved oxygen (greater than 6.5 mg/L) for germinative changes in the seeds to occur optimally.