International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Science (IJAERS) Peer-Reviewed Journal ISSN: 2349-6495(P) | 2456-1908(O) Vol-8, Issue-12; Dec, 2021 Journal Home Page Available: https://ijaers.com/ Article DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijaers.812.31 www.ijaers.com Page | 312 Germination and vigor in sorghum seeds under flood stress Fábio Batista de Lima 1 , Alexandre Martins Abdão dos Passos 2 , Josué Bispo da Silva 3 , Roniel Geraldo Avila 4 and Mayana Pereira Maia 5 1 Department of Agriculture, Federal University of Acre, Brazil 2 Embrapa Milho e Sorgo, PO Box 151, Sete Lagoas, Brazil 3 Department of Agriculture, Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil 4 Department of Agriculture, Instituto Federal Goiano, Brazil 5 Department of Agriculture, Federal University of São João Del Rei, Brazil Received: 14 Nov 2021, Received in revised form: 11 Dec 2021, Accepted: 19 Dec 2021, Available online: 27 Dec 2021 ©2021 The Author(s). Published by AI Publication. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Keywords— Flooding stress, Germination, Seed vigor, Sorghum bicolor, Water submersion. Abstract—The objective of this study was to evaluate the physiological quality of sorghum seeds under water stress. For the experiment, five lots of sorghum seeds with the same genotype (CMX5156A) and different physiological qualities were used. Five lots were submitted to different combinations of hypoxia time (4, 8, 16, 24, 36, and 48 hours under water) and temperature (20, 30, and 40°C). The moisture content, percentage of germination and emergence, height, and dry matter of seedlings from soaked seeds, were determined. A completely randomized experimental design in a 5 x 6 x 3 factorial, with four replicates, was used. The effect of hypoxia stressed the sorghum seed, affecting the germination of the seeds and emergence, dry mass, and height of the seedlings. The greatest decreases in viability and vigor were observed at higher temperatures and flood times. It is concluded that the germination and vigor of sorghum seeds are adversely affected by flooding. The submersion of seed in water at 40°C for 24 hours allows the segregation of sorghum seed lots. I. INTRODUCTION Modern agricultural markets aim for high-quality use of inputs, which encourages the development of new methodologies to determine the vigor and viability of seeds (AOSA, 2009). An efficient vigor test should be low-cost, fast, simple, objective, and reproducible, and the results must perform similar to the seedling emergence test in the field (Krzyzanowski et al., 2021). On the same hand, on-farm tests to estimate the physiological potential of seeds, which have low dependence on high-cost equipment and can provide fast, easy-to-interpret, and highly reproducible results, represent an additional advantage compared to traditional methods. An alternative to determine seed vigor, is the flooding test, in which the seed to be evaluated is submerged in water and subject to stress by rapid imbibition and lack of oxygen. Under these conditions, there is an increase in the deterioration of physiological quality, compromising germination and seed vigor (Dantas et al., 2000; Zucareli et al., 2011). The limited amount of oxygen during the soaking period (hypoxia) is the mechanism and factor that underlies flooding as a test of vigor. This oxygen restriction induces a change from the aerobic airway to the anaerobic or fermentative one (Castro et al., 2004). This promotes the unbalanced formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are highly deleterious, generating seed unviability or compromised seedling development and growth (Sharma et al., 2012).