Frank's experiment #2

This little experiment was designed to determine if Iodine in very low concentrations could be valuable as a good soak. These data do not reflect an growing out of seeds tested and only reflect the success of soaking the seeds without any rotting away in extended film soaking in petry dishes. The growing out woud of course be a necessity in the long run to determine if Iodine injures the hypocotyl in any way.

I used two species in this experiment. I. purpurea and I tricolor (two sources and two colors

This experiment includes 2 species, therfore it is in two parts.

Part one, I. purpurea, is divided into two plates.
Plate #1, Distilled water as a film in petry plates, with I.purpurea seeds. After
9 days mold appeared
Plate #2 1%iodine solution as a disinfectant with same specie
After 13 days the plate with 1% iodine did not have mold. Enough
for me.

Part two, I.tricolor is divided into two plates with the seeds from two origins.
Plate #3 Flying saucers, .5% iodine, no mold at 13 days
Plate #4 Dark blue, .5% Iodine, no mold at 13 days.
Excellent germination in bothe plates. Chlorophyl, yahoo.

Conclusion: Iodine at .5% is a good disinfectant for a seed soak. Unsolicited revelation, is that in a two day soak of .5% iodine, the I.tricolor seed coat is completely unzipped and unjacketed and ready for uneventful germination. See pictures.. Frank

oh Frank...

Frank, you've done a great service to us with this experiment. I tried to germinate I. tricolor 'Wedding Bells' this year and no matter which variation of soak/not soak, nick/not nick, plant direct - all molded, even though I scrubbed with a water/clorox solution before sowing (source had advised the scrub since she was concerned about mold in this batch).

Thank you so much

I am going to try this.

I don't think I have time to try it out, but find it interesting,... they first looked like giant earthworms to me and that is why I opened the pic. Lots of good experimental/research work there.

I think this old post is still important today, so I am going to update it. When we nick the seed, and allow it to "imbibe water", as the seed swells, it also bursts the zippers making up the seed coat. In this specie, the seed coat, under a microscope, seems to be made up of strips of horizontal bars, glued together. When nicked is soaked, and the seed swells, these strips of protective bars seem to part under swelling, allowing the water to soak even better into the embryo....... But again, keeping them from rotting during this phase, is important, and the iodine seems to outlast the bleach and the peroxide.
The important part of bleach is Chlorine, a gas, and it gets blown away. Peroxide also effervesses off and is blown away. They are good for all things that take 3 days or less to germinate. Iodine, is usually found as a salt, and this means that it is left, after the other stuff, in the compound it came in, blows away as gasses. It lasts longer than the other popular disinfectants I have read about here, and does well to keep germinating seeds from rotting in the germination process.

When I use iodine, I just ad a few drops, to the liquid I am soaking seeds in. A bottle of 10% iodine, containes a liquid that is BLACK! 10% is a very strong concentration, and it will permanently stain any gloves, rags, towels you get it on. If you shop for a bottle of Iodine, get one with a tip up dropper spout. Most of them have this kind of cap. Regardless of the concentration of the Iodine, the visual test remains the most accurate. Yellow water is no more successful than orange or red water with more Iodine. Yellow water is good, but if you increase the concentration to a darker and darker level, sooner or later it will become toxic to the seed. If you are using so much that the outside of the root radical is stained dark orange or red, you are using too much. It is at this stage, that the root tips break off and float around, if you have used too much iodine, or waited too long to get your see into the seed starter mix.

I Nhil seeds, are pretty straight forward: nick it, soak it, plant it. But even then, I would reccomend soaking THEM at first with weak Iodine, just to increase your germination percentage ,with those, sometimes very expensive seeds.

My goal is "NONE ROT", and no seed is left behind.

Now that our yards are planted, we will probably start playing with the harder to get success seeds. I hope this old post, brought forward helps all. It was break through stuff for me. It is so wonderful to get 100% no rot germination, finally, especially on those expensive seeds. TTY Frank

Thank you for this helpful information.

In the photo above, there is a lot of information about the structure of the seed coat in
I.tricolor . As the seed coat gets saturated, it begins to disintegrate, in what appears to be, predestined places. The picture above, shows white, in the cracks between the seed coat fragments, the white is the endosperm, just under the shell.

If the seed coats/shells, of all the species, are made up of puzzle like pieces, that fall apart with the right amount of soaking, then some day we may know how long it takes different species to soak, long enough to at least soften. I really doubt that the truely hard shelled seeds, disassociate in a uniform way, like in the photo above. But how do we soften them quickly and easily? I think I feel a few more projects coming on.

If you stared at the chart on the other project thread, and saw the right hand columns, indicating how long the tumbler grinding would take for that specie, then you have already seen, that 6 different species, have quite a variety of shell hardnesses ,and thicknesses. I think we need even more information. Hmmmmm......

GOOD NEWS. I just nicked and soaked some seeds of I.mauritanica, and as they soaked, the seed coats also swelled up and cracked, just like in the photo above. I am going to have some fun with this specie. It also gets huge underground tubers, up to 40#, but the nice thing is that the mauve to purple flower, with deep purple throat, has a lobed flower. It is perrenial too for zone 10, according to Silverhill Seeds. FYI