Fig. 1.

Natural aging remarkably suppressed sunflower seed germination and seedling emergence. (A–D) Typical images of naturally aged sunflower seeds in the imbibition process (48 h). Sunflower seeds after 6, 12, 18 and 24 months of storage were used for analysis. Scale bar, 10 mm. (E) The germination rates of different samples (A–D) (at 84 h post-sowing). (F) The seedling emergence phenotypes for different samples (A–D) after germination (at 5 days post-sowing). Scale bar, 600 mm. (G) The seedling emergence rates of different samples (A–D) (at 5 days post-sowing). (H) Typical images for sunflower seedling. Scale bar, 200 mm. (I) Quantitative analysis on the seedling height shown in (H). Four biological replicates each with 50 seeds for each treatment were set in seed germination and seedling emergence tests. The diverse lowercase(s) on top of the bars were indicative of significant differences (p < 0.01, Lsd) across treatments.