Seed Vigour In Relation To Heat Sensitivity And Heat Resistance In Barley Evaluated By Multivariate Data Analysis

Birthe Møller1,2 and Lars Munck1
1The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Dairy and Food Science, Food Technology, Rolighedsvej 30, Dk-1958 Frederiksberg C
2Corresponding author: E-mail: bm@kvl.dk

J. Inst. Brew. 108(3), 286-293, 2002  |   VIEW ARTICLE

ABSTRACT
The vigour loss model based on normal distribution after artificially ageing by heat treatment of barley seeds developed by Ellis and Roberts and further developed at Carlsberg by Aastrup et al. introducing vigour potential (VP), does not adequately describe seed vigour for all barley samples. In a preliminary investigation we have identified heat-resistant barley samples. In this investigation we found untreated barley samples from the field where heat treatment as high as 68°C for 4 h at 12% water content only decreases germination from 99.0% to 93.8% compared with 94.8% to 0.0% for some of the heat-sensitive barleys following the above mentioned model. The correlation between germination velocity measured by the germination index (GI) of untreated samples and VP is not consistent when comparing different barley material. It is concluded that the classic vigour loss model for heat treatment may be used as a worst case prediction for germination, but it does not address the variation found in practice, including the possible advantage of exploiting the naturally occurring heat resistance.

Key words:
Barley, heat resistance, heat treatment, principal component analysis, vigour.

Publication no. G-2002-0826-044  ^©2002 The Institute & Guild of Brewing