Vegetable seed priming: Improving seed quality with novel seed treatments

Agriculture is the heart of our food system and as our population grows, so does our challenge to feed the world. In order to meet this growing demand, we need to transition to a sustainable, more resilient food production system. Environmentally friendly agri-technologies that refine quality, storability and resilience of crop seeds are more important than ever before. Even small advancements on seed quality have the potential to make a huge impact on food security and sustainability.

The global seed market is valued at USD62 billion in 2019 and expected to grow at CAGR of 7.6% to USD86 billion by 2026. Under changing future climate scenarios, the seed sector and food production chains will be affected, undermining food security. High-quality seeds are effectively the delivery mechanism of a broad spectrum of different agri-technologies. Decades of advanced plant breeding has provided high performing mature plants, the seed of which are treated with our most advanced agri-technologies. One such agri-technology is seed priming.

Seed priming is a pre-sowing treatment often applied to commercial vegetable seed lots and is widely used by seed technologists to enhance seed vigour and seedling performance. It is a technique that allows the controlled hydration of a seed that triggers the early phase of germination, including metabolic and physiological processes, without leading to full germination. Several different methods are used to prime seeds and priming provides faster and more synchronized germination as well as an increased stress tolerance. Commercial seeds that are often primed include tomato, pepper, onion, leek, celery, parsnip and lettuce. A major disadvantage of classical seed priming is the loss or reduction of storability and in general a higher susceptibility to seed ageing this means a careful balance must be struck when developing a seed priming regime.

Royal Holloway University recently invested in the Agri-technology/Food Security sector and acquired a multifunctional priming cabinet and a seed dryer. This cabinet is perfect for developing priming protocols by running ten priming cylinders at the same time with individual day/night and temperature regimes. This is ideal to study novel priming techniques and to investigate the underlying principles of priming and its effect on seed ageing. This studentship directly addresses crop resilience by investigating the role of different (additive) seed priming methods on seed germination, stress tolerance and storability. We will explore different seed priming and defined seed drying regimes as well as priming with gas plasma activated water and its effect on seed storability. The proposed project is a collaboration between Royal Holloway's Seed Science and Technology Group with Plasma Engineer Dr Felipe Iza at Loughborough University, and the independent British vegetable breeding company Tozer Seeds with their Director of R&D Dr Jamie Claxton.

In this interdisciplinary PhD project, with a supervisory team consisting of seed biologists, electrical engineers and a plant breeding industry partner, we will combine physiological, biochemical and imaging methods to quantify and enhance seed vigour and seedling performance and evaluate gas-plasma activated water as a novel priming technique. This PhD project sits at the heart of the priorities of a future bioeconomy and will provide important & timely transformative and sustainable agricultural solutions to increase crop yields.

The entry qualification for this PhD studentship is a first class or upper second-class honours degree and/or a relevant postgraduate degree, in either biological, environmental or agricultural sciences. Experience in Seed Science is desirable but not essential.

To apply follow link and instructions at https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/applying/postgraduate/how-to-apply/. Please indicate "Steinbrecher" in your application. Application deadline 12 March 2023