Assessment of seed viability by laser speckle techniques

This work presents a new technique as a potential methodology to analyse seeds. The technology is known as dynamic speckle, or blospeckle, an optical phenomenon produced when active materials, such as biological tissue, are illuminated by laser light. In the present work, the biological activity of seed tissues has been inferred from quantitative and qualitative measurements of their speckle activity. The aim is to show that the biospeckle technique has a potential as a methodology to assess seed viability. One aspect that needs to be investigated is how the water content in the seeds affects bio-speckle activity. An experiment has been performed to determine the effect of humidity in the results. Seed activity for different levels of humidity was determined using quantitative and qualitative methods. Also, in others experiments, viable and non-viable seeds with different specific humidity levels could be classified using the same technique. (C) 2003 Silsoe Research Institute. All rights reserved Published bv Elsevier Ltd.