ABSTRACT
Dormancy is the failure to germinate because of some internal block that prevents the completion of the germination process (Black, Butler, and Hughes, 1987). For completeness it should added that dormant seeds can not germinate in the same conditions (e.g., water, air, temperature) under which nondormant seeds do so. Although the adaptive significance of dor mancy is quite evident for plants living in the “wild” (see Chapter 8), it has always been a complication in seeds from plants that are grown as crops. In deed, a persistent dormancy would prevent the utilization of a seed lot either for the generation of a new crop or for industrial purposes (i.e., malting). On the other hand, most crops that originally must have had dormancy have been selected so heavily against dormancy throughout their domestication process that seeds are germinable even prior to crop harvest; this frequently leads to preharvest sprouting, a phenomenon whose consequences are widely described in Chapter 6.
