Seeds keep vital much longer when stored without oxygen
Monday, July 28, 2014 - 07:30
in Biology & Nature
If seed breeding companies, gene banks and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitsbergen should store plant seeds under oxygen-poor conditions, it would be possible to store them for much longer while still maintaining their germination capacity. This is indicated by research carried out by seed physiologists from Wageningen UR and seed experts from the Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands, a Dutch gene bank which is part of Wageningen UR. They studied pregerminated celery seeds, which generally speaking lose their germination capacity after only three weeks. When the seeds were stored without oxygen, 98% of them germinated after three weeks.