ABSTRACT
Among the stages of the plant life cycle, seed germination and seedling establishment are the most vulnerable. The term germination includes se quences of complex processes that lead to the initiation of growth in the qui escent embryo in the seeds, seedling development, and emergence from the soil. During seed germination, various stored substrates are reactivated, re paired if damaged, and transformed into new building materials necessary for the initial growth of the embryo, its subsequent growth, and seedling es tablishment in its natural habitat (Koller and Hadas, 1982). To initiate the array of processes, the condensed, insoluble stored substrates must first be hydrated and then hydrolyzed to their basic forms before they can be repro cessed. The processes necessary to hydrate and reactivate enzymes, cell membranes, and cell organelles require much more respiratory energy than is required to maintain the dry seed (Bewley and Black, 1982).
