Teste de tetrazólio e sua eficácia na identificação da viabilidade de sementes e danos decorrentes do processo agrícola.

Abstract

The agricultural machines’s work cannot damage the seeds’ s viability, in other words, they must not break or crack them. Therefore, there is the tetrazolium test to determine and study the possible causes of situations like these. This test is usually done to determine seed’s viability in the agricultural process. This research work gives an account of tetrazolium tests, made with the objective of separating different ages of bean seeds (phaseolus vulgaris, L.) and to study the seed’s damages causes, using the related test, verifying its effectiveness. Therefore, the seeds were prepared and artificially aged to 10 different ages, using BOD chambers. In that way, the youngest seeds tested were the new ones and the oldest seeds were aged for 216 hours, with a 40 + 1oC temperature and about 90% of relative humidity. Thus, the work showed that, the youngest the seeds are, more vigor and germination potential they have, and, the oldest the seeds are, less vigor and germination potential they present. It was showed, also, the percentage and type of damages causes.