Seed germination characteristics of Corydalis saxicola

Abstract

Corydalis saxicola is a perennial herbaceous plant, which mainly distributed in the karst areas of southwest China. Due to its important ecological and medicinal value, Corydalis saxicola has great prospects for development and utilization. With fragile living environmental condition and anthropogenic harvesting pressure, the wild resource of Corydalis saxicola is on the verge of exhaustion, so it has been included in the list of national key protected wild plants in 2021. In order to explore the causes for the endangerment of Corydalis saxicola and provide reference for its conservation and seedling breeding, this paper investigated the influencing factors on seed germination that including seed preservation methods, chemical pre-treatments, temperature, light, drought, pH, mix with wet sand and refrigerate treatment. The results were as follows: (1) Low-temperature storage can prolonged the seed activity, germination rate of 2-years stored seed could still reached 30%. (2) Germination rates of seed pre-treatments by HCl and NaClO solutions can reached to 50%～60%; germination rate was 50% at 20℃, while closed to zero at 30℃; darkness was more favorable for seed germination than periodic light condition; the seed germination rate kept decreasing with deepening drought; the seed germination rate did not changed significantly under the conditions of pH 3.0～8.0. (3) Mix with wet sand and refrigerate treatment can significantly promoted the seed germination potential and germination rate, and the germination rate was twofold of the control. In summary, the seed inactivation at room temperature and germination inability at high temperatures above 30℃ are more related to its endangerment; efficient seed germination methods can provide an effective way for conservation and industrial application of Corydalis saxicola. The results provide a theoretical and technical guarantee for the conservation of wild Corydalis saxicola, and technically support is cultivation.

Keywords

• corydalis saxicola
• seed storage
• germination method
• index of germination ability
• germination characteristic