Biology session

The extinction rate of the species was increased recently and as biotopes are complex systems the extinction of one species can lead to the disappearance of other ones and the degradation of the whole habitat. For such reasons the conservation of the species have more relevance thus the knowledge of the biology and reproduscion of the species become more important. The regeneration of a plant community is based on the natural seedbank, and it’s regeneration ability correlates with the viability and germination capacity of the seeds. The main aim of the research to determine the seed longevity of hungarian fabaceous plants and to describe the correlation between longevity and seed weight. The breakdown of hardseedness was also tested. As a further goal the research helps to test the availability of herbarium sheets in conservation biological researches. Another aim of the preliminary and new measurements was to develop an efficient and universal germination protocol for the Fabaceae family which consider the methods which already used and tested in the bibliography and may helps us to aswer our scientific questions as well. Four species of the Fabaceae family was used from herbarium sheets of hungarian universities (Royal Hungarian Veterinary College, SZIU Institute of Botany and Ecophysiology, Eszterházy Károly College, University of Debrecen) and fresh samples were collected as well. Samples used in the preliminary research were improved with new ones of different aquisition dates from same collections. Furthermore seeds were measured from other plant families (Resedaceae) as well. Based on the germination tests the first version of the germination protocol was designed but it still needs to be refined. Based on the result it seems the combination of commonly used biological and chemical methods int he same test have better result, as these methodsd generally under or over estimate the germination capacity. In our protocol seeds of the Fabaceae species should be germinated first without treatment thus 1. dead, 2. germinating, 3. dormant seeds can be separated. Scarification (mechanical damage) of the non-turgid seeds and regermination can determine the seeds with physical dormancy, and as a final step a chemical viability test (TTC) on the non-germinated seeds can reveal the number of seeds with possible germination ability. For the further research we would like to involve more species to refine our protocol and give further answers to our questions.