Last year I tested some chemicals as possible stimulants to germination of Country Dancer. the best was calcium nitrate as reported in the recent newsletter. this past fall and winter I’ve set up similar tests with several other CV, mostly shrubs that produce lots of seed for obvious reasons. So far I see germ beginning for either calcium or potassium nitrate, ahead of other salts or control. So I’m thinking this might actually work as a way to speed germ.
One notion of how nitrate works is that the enzyme nitrate reductase reduces it to NO which is a plant hormone. Of course it is also a nutrient. In the article that Henry posted today Mar 4, one of the “related articles” is about using nitrate to overcome the dark dormancy of lettuce seeds.
When you germinate seeds with water, adding it to peat, paper towels, or vermiculite and even straight up, do you use tap water or distilled? Well water often has fairly high nitrate around farms, and so does river water that goes into some water supply systems. Also, adding peroxide or other oxidants can convert organic stuff like ammonia of amino acids, into nitrogen oxides. New regulations on water “chlorination” have results in use of chloroamine, a stable chlorinating/oxidizing agent. It of course has nitrogen in the form of the amine part.
So we may each be doing different experiments on stimulating seed germination in different ways, depending on where the water comes from. In particular the embryo culture done by George V. and Don H. may be sensitive to these issues. I don’t know, I’m just speculating, and asking for your observations and the identity of your water source.
In the U.S. every water supplier has to publish annual results for the water composition, purity, contaminant levels etc. So I know what our city water is on average.
This may be a minor effect, but we don’t know yet. I’m trying various concentrations of nitrate this year to see the lowest that will give a stimulatory effect. Last year I used pretty high nitrate levels, perhaps 10x drinking water standards. This year I’m trying some that are realistic for farmstead water.