The effect of accelerated aging on germination, seedling growth and some antioxidant compounds in barley genotypes

In order to evaluate the effect of accelerated aging on antioxidant compounds and germination indices of barley, an experiment was conducted as factorial in a completely randomized design on eight native barley genotypes and two barley varietyBehrokh and Nosratwith three replications. The first factor was seed aging at two levels including aging and non-aging as control and the second factor was ten barley genotypes that the varieties were as control. Germination percentage of the most genotypes decreased after aging although it has not significant difference with non-aged seed. The results showed that accelerated ageing decreased significantly germination rate, shoot length and root length, concentration of photosynthetic pigments and catalase (CAT) activity. However mean germination time and total phenol content of genotypes and Behrokh and Nosrat varieties increased significantly after seed aging. Genotype 3 had the highestenzyme CAT activity after ageing. Increment of phenol content was different among the genotypes and genotype 8 had the highest phenol content before and after aging rather than the other genotypes and it affected less than the other genotypes by accelerated ageing. Totally the results of thisstudyindicated that genotypes that initially had high phenolic content and enzymatic activity also had vigor and germination rate after seed aging.