A system for automated seed vigour assessment

Seed vigour testing provides valuable information for assessing seed lot qu ality. However, vigour testing has not experienced widespread use because o f its labor intensiveness, high cost and variability in test results from l aboratory to laboratory. An automated seed vigour assessment system is pres ented in this report that is objective, economical and easy to perform. The system interfaces an imaging device that captures digital images of germin ating seedlings to a computer. The images are processed by a computer to ge nerate numerical values that collectively represent the quality of a seed l ot (vigour index) based on various statistics acquired from morphological f eatures of the imaged seedlings. These statistics include the sample mean o f hypocotyl and radicle lengths and sample standard deviation of the hypoco tyl length, radicle length, total length (hypocotyl length plus radicle len gth) and radicle-to-hypocotyl-length ratio that indicate speed and uniformi ty of seedling development. The system was tested on lettuce seedlings grow n for three days in the dark. The results indicated that the imaging system accurately quantified these parameters to yield reproducible, objective vi gour assessments.