ABSTRACT

The pre-harvest sprouting in cereals has a common biological background, the consequences of such damage have vastly different effects in the various cereal industries depending on use and on technology. The seed and malting industry should, at the time of raw material purchase, be able not only to analyse germination and vitality but also to forecast the parameters up to 12 months ahead under the given storage conditions. On the other hand, the situation in the milling and baking industries is quite different from that of the seed and malting professions. In the seed industry, seed tests for vitality e.g. the Vitascope have been employed with varying success. The technique can be used to study vitreousity in seeds as well as to perform analyses where various stains are employed for e.g. detection of cell wall breakdown in barley by Calcofluor or pregerminated seeds in barley and in wheat, rye and triticale by fluorescein dibutyrate.