The effect of seed moisture content and storage duration on oxidative stress in barley seeds

The expensive cost of seed storage could be reducing by using suitable genotypes. In order to evaluate the variety of storage potential of barley genotypes an experiment was conducted factorially with three factors as completely randomized design with three replications. The first factor was included eight genotypes with two native barley cultivars, the second factor was three levels of seed moisture content including 7, 14 and 18 percentage and the third was aging duration (three days, one week and four weeks). The results showed that germination decreased with increasing moisture content so that when moisture reached 18% only genotype 3 and 4 germinated after one week storage with 18% moisture content after four weeks storage there was no germination in this moisture level. Total phenolic content and malondialdehyde decreased after four weeks storage with 18% seed moisture content and the genotypes studied, genotype 72747 (8) had the highest amount of phenol and germination percentage (78.33%) during three days of storage with 18% seed moisture.The genotypes 3, 4 from China 7 and 8 from Iran showed anti-oxidant content increment in adverse conditions warehouse which imposed by high seed moisture content and temperature. These genotypes also showed the highest germination and seed vigor after storage.