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Biochemistry of Germination and Growth

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Physiology and Biochemistry of Seeds in Relation to Germination

Abstract

The cellular processes which have been studied most extensively in the germinating seed are respiration, enzyme and organelle activity and RNA and protein synthesis. This is not surprising for it is reasonable to expect that such fundamental aspects of cellular activity should play an important role in the preparation of seeds for germination; we will concentrate on these in this chapter. Other metabolic events (such as steroid biosynthesis, changes in alkaloid content) have also been studied but since at the present time these do not appear to be important for the initiation and control of germination they will be ignored. For the sake of continuity, biochemical events associated with both germination (radicle emergence) and subsequent growth will be considered together in this chapter although we will indicate which occur prior to visible germination and which are post-germination events. The reader should be careful to distinguish between these. Such a distinction does not always appear in the literature on seed physiology and workers and reviewers often refer loosely to germination when they are in fact considering seedling growth. The exclusively post-germination events in connection with food mobilization are discussed in Chapter 6.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Calgary, T2N 1N4, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

    Dr. J. Derek Bewley

  2. Department of Biology, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, Campden Hill Road, London, W8 7AH, Great Britain

    Dr. Michael Black

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  1. Dr. J. Derek Bewley
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Bewley, J.D., Black, M. (1978). Biochemistry of Germination and Growth. In: Physiology and Biochemistry of Seeds in Relation to Germination. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-66668-1_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-66668-1_5

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