Study of Seed Ageing in Maize Mutant and Two Possible Approaches to Restore Seed Germination.

Phytic acid (PA) is a strong anti-nutritional factor with a key antioxidant role in countering reactive oxygen species. Despite the potential benefits of () mutants, the reduction of PA causes pleiotropic effects, e.g., reduced seed germination and viability loss related to seed ageing. The current study evaluated a historical series of naturally aged seeds and showed that seeds aged faster as compared to wildtype. To mimic natural ageing, the present study set up accelerated ageing treatments at different temperatures. It was found that incubating the seeds at 57 °C for 24 h, the wildtype germinated at 82.4% and at 40%. The current study also hypothesized two possible solutions to overcome these problems: (1) Classical breeding was used to constitute synthetic populations carrying the mutation, with genes pushing anthocyanin accumulation in the embryo (R-navajo allele). The outcome showed that the presence of R-navajo in the genotype was not able to improve the germinability (-20%), but this approach could be useful to improve the germinability in non-mutant genotypes (+17%). (2) In addition, hydropriming was tested on and wildtype seeds, and germination was improved by 20% in , suggesting a positive role of seed priming in restoring germination. Moreover, the data highlighted metabolic differences in the metabolome before and after hydropriming treatment, suggesting that the differences in germination could also be mediated by differences in the metabolic composition induced by the mutation.