Can lipid thermal fingerprints predict the long-term storage viability of seeds?

Maintaining viability of seeds during long term storage is an ongoing challenge and, due to few long term data sets, optimal conditions for seed storage remain the subject of debate.

In this study, Plant & Food Research scientist Dr Jayanthi Nadarajan, and colleagues from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, investigated whether thermal fingerprints could be used to predict if seeds would remain viable in storage. 

The team generated thermal fingerprints using scanning calorimetry (DSC) for seeds of 20 wild species of the Brassicaceae (cabbage family) that had been stored for up to c. 40 years. Standard seed bank storage conditions (e.g. temperatures of −20 ºC) may not be optimum for all oily seeds, such as a Brassicaceae. The researchers found that multiple features of the lipid thermal fingerprint could be used to predict potential poor performance of oily seed types during long-term (decades) storage.

Journal Reference:

Mira S, Nadarajan J, Liu U, González-Benito ME, Pritchard H 2019 Lipid Thermal Fingerprints of Long-term Stored Seeds of Brassicaceae. Plants (Basel) 8 (10) https://doi.org/10.3390/plants8100414