Respiratory activity for the differentiation of vigor on soybean seeds lots

Currently, the highest interest with respect to the assessment of seed physiological quality is to obtain reliable results in a relatively short period of time. This initiative allows for prompt decisions during different phases of seed production primarily after physiological maturity. This research was performed to verify the efficiency and rapidity of the method of Pettenkofer to determine the respiratory activity and to differentiate vigor levels of soybean seed lots. Three lots of soybean seeds cv. 8000 were used. Seed performance was determined by respiratory activity, compared to the following tests: standard germination, germination first count, electrical conductivity, seedling emergence, seedling shoot and root length and total dry mass. Results ranked seed lots according to defferences in physiological quality. Seed imbibition and conditioning period in Pettenkofer's equipment were enough to detect differences in vigor among seed lots, showing that the determination of the respiratory activity is a promising procedure to identify differences in vigor levels among soybean seed lots.

RR soybean seed quality after application of glyphosate in different stages of crop development

In consequence of several studies and speculations concerning the issue of RR transgenic soybean after the application of glyphosate, additional scientific investigations became necessary to clarify the actual viability of the product use when applied in different developmental stages of the soybean crop. Therefore, this study was aimed to evaluate the physiological quality as well as seed health quality of RR soybean subjected to application of the herbicide glyphosate in different phonological stages of the transgenic soybean, cultivar CD 219RR. For this, an experiment with a complete block experimental design with treatments randomly distributed within the block, with four replications, was carried out. The assessed treatments were foliar sprayings of glyphosate in three increasing dosages [0 (control); 1,440 g ha-1; and 2,880 g ha-1] of acid equivalent, applied in two crop developmental stages: vegetative (V6) and reproductive (R2). The variables assessed were: germination; first count of germination; fresh and dry mass of seedlings, lengths of seedling and root; vigor and viability by the tetrazolium test; and seed health quality. Glyphosate application may adversely affect physiological quality of RR soybean seeds, when applied in dosages varying from 1,440 to 2,880 g acid equivalent per hectare at the stages V6 and R2.