Physiological response of tomato seeds Solanum lycopersicum L var Unapal-Maravilla and pepper seed Capsicum annuum L var Unapal-Serrano to criopreservation

摘要

To evaluate the effect of four levels of moisture content (10-12, 8-10, 6-8 and 2-4 %) and cryopreservation in liquid nitrogen (LN) on the physiological seed quality of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) var Unapal–Maravilla and pepper, Capsicum annuum L., var Unapal-Serrano an experiment at the physiology lab and the cryopreservation lab of the Humboldt Institute of the International Center for Tropical Agricultural (CIAT) was carried out. A complete ramdom design with four replications for seed germination seed test and 2 replications for the seed emergence test was used. The results showed an initial high quality of seed and a drastic humidity content reduction during the first 120 minutes. Seed humidity content lower than 5%, were obtained after 5 hours to be exposed to silica gel. At humidity lower than 9.9 %, tomato seeds had a drastic reduction in viability and germination. On the other hand, capsicum seeds showed a significant reduction in germination and viability when humidity content was 2.6%. With a fast freezing treatment of seeds by immersion on LN without cryoprotectants during 30 days, there was no negatives effects on germination and viability of seeds of the two studied species.