seed-priming
Seed priming is a pre-sowing treatment technique in which seeds are exposed to controlled conditions—such as regulated moisture, temperature, or chemical solutions—to activate metabolic processes and prepare them for germination. This method is particularly significant in plant science because it enhances germination speed, seedling vigor, and stress tolerance, enabling more consistent and resilient crop establishment with practical applications across diverse agricultural systems.
PubMed · 2026-05-25
Treating wheat seeds with nitric oxide before planting, combined with spraying leaves with glycine betaine (a natural compound found in beets and spinach), significantly reduced the damage caused by cadmium-contaminated soil and improved grain yield. Both treatments together restored plant growth, antioxidant defenses, and harvest metrics that cadmium stress had suppressed.
Cadmium stress significantly reduced all measured yield traits, including 1000-grain weight, total grain weight, spike length, and fertile spikelet count.
Combined nitric oxide seed priming and foliar glycine betaine application restored antioxidant enzyme activity and suppressed reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation in stressed wheat plants.
The dual treatment improved chlorophyll content and multiple morphological metrics, suggesting both physiological and structural recovery under cadmium stress.
