An Investigation of Seed Longevity and Antioxidant Changes of Conserved Barley Germplasm
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Seed longevity is crucial for the sustainable ex situ conservation of germplasm in genebanks, yet its reliable assessment remains a significant challenge. This research was conducted to predict the longevity of a diverse barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) germplasm collection comprising cultivated and wild types preserved in long-term storage (LTS) at Plant Gene Resources of Canada (PGRC) for 5 to 37 years, and to study the changes in antioxidant levels during storage. In this study, a quadratic random intercept model was applied to viability data to predict longevity as a flexible modelling approach. Seedling lengths, variation in viability and lengths were analyzed in parallel with the viability model as a novel approach to longevity prediction. To account for intra-specific variation, modelling was also performed within several biological subcategories. Additionally, temporal dynamics of antioxidant parameters—total phenolic content (TPC), DPPH radical scavenging assay and total antioxidant capacity by FRAP assay—were evaluated for a subset of covered barley. Barley germplasm remained viable for nearly four decades in the PGRC base collection, suggesting that the first monitoring test could potentially be deferred until at least 35 years after storage. Distinct patterns of viability loss were observed among covered cultivars, hulless barley and covered wild barley, although the latter two groups were underrepresented. Models based on radicle length and on variability in viability (tCVV) and radicle length (tCVRL), aligned with the viability-based curve for all barley. However, for all covered barley and covered breeding lines, radicle length declined faster than viability, suggesting its potential use as an early indicator of viability loss. Together, these alternative modelling approaches reinforce the longevity estimates derived from the viability model. Changes in antioxidant parameters did not consistently reflect the observed patterns of viability loss across three covered barley germplasm types, although antioxidant parameters were highly correlated with each other (r > 0.7; p > 0.001). Interestingly, covered wild barley showed the highest TPC, DPPH and FRAP activities relative to cultivated and breeding barley groups, which increased with prolonged storage—except for notably low values in the intermediate group. Collectively, this study revealed characteristic patterns of viability loss and differences in antioxidant dynamics among barley subgroups under LTS at PGRC, suggesting that defining longevity parameters at the intra-specific levels may improve the management of seed collections in genebanks.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".