40 GERMINATION.CA JANUARY 2018 the ability of seeds to be stored for long periods can be ported over to plant tissues themselves to possibly breed other plants to be desiccation tolerant. “Seeds can be dried and stored without dying, which is the basis of modern agriculture and civilization as we know it. This is an amazing survival strategy on the part of a seed. When you dry most plants, however, they die. In the field it can only withstand a certain level of drought,” he says. “If we can build in that desic- cation tolerance, during a period of dry weather, a plant could stop growing and the moment it starts raining, it will come back again.” This has major ramifications for the age of climate change and the breeding of drought-tolerant plants, but also could potentially be used to create new consumer products. Hilhorst already has an idea for one such product: dehydrated lettuce. Theoretically, the dried lettuce product could be stored indefinitely on shelves, thereby cutting down on food waste caused by unsold lettuce having to be thrown out once it’s past its best-before date. “This is something we think is fundamentally possible. In the genome of these crops, the instruc- tions for desiccation tolerance exist, but are directed only at the seeds and not the leaf tissues. We are look- ing for the switch that turns it on in vegetative tissues. We’re certain it’s there — we just have to find it,” Hilhorst adds. ISSS President Henk Hilhorst, professor in the plant sciences department at Wageningen University. Visualizing Seeds Birte Boelt, senior researcher in the Department of Agrocecology, Crop Health at Denmark’s Aarhus University, also presented her research on the use of multispectral imaging in seed quality analysis. A multispectral image captures high-resolution image data within specific wavelength ranges across the electromagnetic spectrum. These images are then put together to give a detailed pictured of the surface of a seed. “It can be used to see to what extent the seed is developed. It gives us an insight we haven’t had before,” she says. Boelt is working to encour- age the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) to adopt the technology’s use in a seed testing capacity. The 13th triennial ISSS conference will take place in Brighton, England, in 2020. Nexeed Inc – Equipment solutions for Canadian grain & seed processors. Your Local Cimbria Dealer. Equipment sales, color sorters, spare parts, training, or plant design contact Nexeed to learn more. 204 982 3531 NEXEED.CA For video/audio interviews from the conference, visit SeedWorld.com/ isss-2017/