Excerpt from Preliminary Investigations on Dry, Cold Storage of Southern Pine Seed

Early attempts at the Southern Forest Experiment Station to store south ern pine seed made use of a variety of containers, such as sealed glass jars, paper bags, and even sealed wax - paper bags. Some seed lots were disinfected with formaldehyde, other lots were untreated. No record was made of the moisture content of the seed at time of storing, nor was the germination per centage (measure of initial seed quality) always determined for the fresh seed. Temperatures during the storage period were disregarded. A concise, quantita tive summary of experiments during this early period cannot be made, but the nature of the results is readily apparent when the data are grouped loosely by species and by treatment previous to storage. The results were highly erratic and generally unsatisfactory (see table The viability of longleaf seed was usually greatly reduced within a year. For instance, the germination per centage of a longleaf seed lot dropped in 1 year from an initial value of 49 percent to 14 percent when stored, without disinfection, in sealed glass; yet the following season, the germination percentage of a lot under comparable storage conditions with 77 percent initial germination dropped in 1 year to percent. On the other hand, longleaf seed from the 1925 crop, with a ger mination of 75 percent when fresh, when stored in sealed glass after treatment with formaldehyde kept remarkably well for 1 year (germination percent) and moderately well for 2 years more percent and percent germina tion after 2 and 3 years, respectively). Since the longleaf seed were usually dried by air currents from an electric fan after treatment with formaldehyde, it was thought that this thorough drying might have been the factor responsible for the good preservation of these seed lots. This led to measurements of seed moisture content before storage, and in 1935 a cautious surmise was expressed that moisture content was important in the storage of longleaf pine seed.

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