Semi-Automated Embryo Area Evaluation of Cucumber Seeds and Its Relationship with Germination and Seedling Length.

Automatized evaluations are highly desirable by seed industry to provide fast results and eliminate interpretation errors based on human visual analysis.  The objective of this research was to identify variations in the ratio of embryo development in commercial cucumber seed lots and its relationship with physiological potential.  Seeds of cultivars Supremo and Safira (four lots each), with germination over 90% were radiographed, evaluated according to embryonic area (software Tomato Analyzer) and germinated (4 days at 25 °C); germination percentage and seedling length were registered.  The average of seed embryo area was 79.7 and 80.9% (Supremo and Safira, respectively), with embryo area variations of 4.4 and 1.0 percentage points among the lots of each cultivar.  The semi-automated analysis using Tomato Analyzer software allows the identification of small variations in the ratio of embryonic development in cucumber seed lots; seeds with embryonic area lower than 78.1% were found to be more likely to generate less developed normal seedlings or abnormal seedlings.