Application of Bio-speckle Activity to Assess Seed Viability

摘要

This study presents an assessment method for seed viability, using bio-speckle technique. Bio-speckle is caused by moving of the biological material under highly coherent light. If this phenomenon can be measured by successive speckle patterns during the period of germination, it is possible to identify different activities of the seeds. Viable and non-viable pisumsativum seeds were illuminated by a helium-neon laser source of 7mW with wavelength of 632.8 ran. The speckle patterns were recorded by a digital colour charge-couple device camera and stored in the host computer for further analysis using Matlab. Two methods were used to obtain information of biological activities from these speckle patterns. It was observed that the seeds activities can be distinguished as viable seeds and non-viable seeds. The results indicate that bio-speckle can be used to assess seed viability.