Seeds

Question 1

What is a seed?

Answer 1

An “immature plant in an arrested state” produced through sexual reproduction.

Question 2

What is a “true-to-type” plant?

Answer 2

A plant that results from a seed has the same traits and appearance as the plant that produced the seed.

Question 3

What is vegetative propagation?

Answer 3

A form of asexual reproduction of a plant where the stems, leaves, and roots, or other tissue not involved in reproduction are rooted.

Question 4

What are synthetic seeds?

Answer 4

Seeds produced through tissue culture by the artificial encapsulation of somatic embryos, shoot buds, aggregates of cells, or any tissues that have the ability to form a plant.

Question 5

What is a seed viability test?

Answer 5

Viability tests determine whether or not seeds are able to germinate under standard conditions and results are reported as germination percentages.

Question 6

What is seed vigor?

Answer 6

A measure of how well seeds germinate rather than if they are simply viable or not.

Question 7

How is seed vigor assessed?

Answer 7

By germinating seeds under adverse conditions and measuring how fast seeds germinate, how the seeds germinate at adverse temperatures or how seeds germinate after aging during short-term storage at elevated temperatures and moisture contents.

Question 8

What is the purpose for a hot water soak treatment of a seed?

Answer 8

To treat brassicas and certain other species with hot water to kill most seed-borne fungi and bacteria without affecting the seed.

Question 9

What are pregerminated seeds?

Answer 9

Seeds that have begun the germination process but have little or no root growth.

Question 10

What is seed priming?

Answer 10

Seeds have been subjected to a controlled hydration process followed by redrying before planting by imbibing seed in either osmotic solutions, moist solid carrier materials, or with water alone to permit early metabolic events associated with germination to proceed before radicle emergence commences.

Question 11

What seeds respond best to priming?

Answer 11

Peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce.

Question 12

What factors determine seed longevity?

Answer 12

The combination of seed moisture content and temperature. 1 (Harrington, 1963). d

Question 13

What is Harrington’s Rule?

Answer 13

Harrington’s Rule illustrates the relationship between seed moisture, temperature, and viability. It states that the potential storage life of seeds doubles for every 1% decrease in seed moisture content over the range from 5–14% or 5°C (41°F) decrease in storage temperature from 0–50°C (32–122°F).

Question 14

How should seeds be stored?

Answer 14

As cool and dry as possible. As a general rule, the best moisture content for maintaining viability of most vegetable seeds is 5% and the best temperature below 5°C (40°F).

Question 15

What is an heirloom cultivar?

Answer 15

One that was commonly grown during earlier times in human history, is not used for modern large-scale commercial production, has retained its traits through open-pollination and is not an F-1 hybrid.

Question 16

What is an open pollinated cultivar?

Answer 16

A heterogeneous cultivar of a cross-pollinated crop that is allowed to inter-pollinate freely during seed production to produce plants reasonably true-to-type but by nature there is more natural variation in an open-pollinated than a self-pollinated crop. Many heirloom cultivars of cross-pollinated vegetables,

Question 17

What is a self-pollinated crop?

Answer 17

A crop having perfect flowers that contain both male (anthers) and female (pistils) flower parts and therefore self-pollinated.

Question 18

What is a pure line?

Answer 18

A self-pollinated crop that does not outcross because all the seeds were derived by self-pollination of a single flower, for example, lettuce or most beans. Pure line seeds are usually uniform and will grow true-to-type from seed..

Question 19

What is a hybrid?

Answer 19

The offspring of sexual reproduction.

Question 20

What are F1 hybrids?

Answer 20

Hybrids are made by sexually crossing two true-breeding homozygous plants to produce an F-1 (short for Filial 1), which means “first off-spring.” which are heterozygous, having two alleles, one contributed by each parent and typically one is dominant and the other recessive. The F-1 generation is also uniform.

Question 21

What is heterosis?

Answer 21

F-1 hybrid vegetable cultivars express heterosis. or hybrid vigor which is expressed by F-1 hybrid cultivars expressed as the improved or increased function of any biological quality in hybrid offspring.

Question 22

What is the dominance theory of heterosis?

Answer 22

The dominance hypothesis attributes the superiority of hybrids to the suppression of undesirable (deleterious) genetic traits from one parent over the other It attributes the poor performance of the inbred lines used to make F-1 hybrids to a loss of genetic diversity.

Question 23

What is the overdominance theory of heterosis?

Answer 23

The overdominance hypothesis says that some combinations of alleles (which can be obtained by crossing two inbred lines) are especially advantageous when paired together in one individual.

Question 24

Name three categories of commercial seeders?

Answer 24

Drills, plate planters, and precision planters.

Question 25

What is fluid drilling?

Answer 25

Where germinated seeds are suspended in gel and transferred to a seedbed.

Question 26

What are two types of transplants in terms of root systems?

Answer 26

Bare root or having a ball of soil and roots attached.

Question 27

A rule of thumb for seedling depth is?

Answer 27

3 to five times the width of the seed.

Question 28

What is the minimum acceptable greenhouse temperature for cold sensitive crops?

Answer 28

50 F

Question 29

What is EC?

Answer 29

EC is electrical conductivity or total salts dissolved in water and is a measurement of water quality.