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High rates of germination and vigorous seedlings are priority
goals for the horticulture and plant agriculture. Every non-germinated seed or poor quality seedling wastes valuable space
and resources. Seed technologies continue to offer new solutions for solving
the problems of establishing healthy fast growing plants. However, in most of the cases technologies for increasing seed germination
rates are limited to chemical treatments only – they are not suitable for growing plants organically.
Seed performance in our trials was improved by
the combined treatments of seeds with the light and organically - chelated microelements that can be considered as “natural” pre-sowing treatment of seeds. These trials included, five vegetables
(carrot, cucumber, lettuce, pepper and tomato), five field (barley, corn, soybean, tobacco and wheat) and several ornamental
crops. A light-emitting device (LED- panel) was designed for pre-sowing treatment by illumination of seeds with light
of certain wavelengths of red and infrared parts of sunlight spectrum. The
treatment increased the percent of germination of low and medium quality cucumber, lettuce, barley, corn, soybean and wheat
seeds from 5% to 15%. Stimulation of germination (20%) and 1.5-fold increase in dry weight accumulation were observed with
tobacco treated with the light. The treatments produced statistically significant improvement in germination of tomatoes,
including Heinz Seed tomato hybrids. Treated hybrids had 7-14% more healthy plants than untreated (control) and greater
biomass accumulation.
Application
of “organic - mineral powders” with the light irradiation facilitates substantially the procedure of seed treatment
and helps to solve the problem of shorter shelf life of primed seeds. Our company designed the seed treatment units that can
be easily used by seed growers. The growers, especially organic growers, can save substantial funds priming the seeds themselves
instead of spending money for expensive seeds from companies. This technology also holds promise in the brewing and malting
industry. Enhanced and homogeneous germination of barley or other malted grains is seen as a very desirable objective in seeking
to improve the malting process.
Dr.
Vasilenko believes that there research in this field and practical application of seed enhancement technology with
high potential commercial ability on the market of innovations for organic agriculture. His company is looking for new opportunities
to run series of trials in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our technology on seeds of different organically grown
crops.
The interest of organic farmers, seed companies
and research institutions will be welcomed.
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