Physiological Potential of Peanut Seeds During Harvest, Transport and Cleaning Operations.

When the seeds reach physiological maturity it shows a high germination and vigor potential. In the course of time, there is a decrease in quality due to the natural process of deterioration. This can be compounded by mechanized operations during harvest, transport and processing, which can accelerate the seeds deterioration. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the peanut seeds physiological potential during harvest, transport and cleaning operations. The experiment was conducted with peanut seeds cv. Runner IAC 886. Seeds were sampled after the peanut digger/inverters operations, combine harvesting, transport from the field until arrival at the Processing Unit, pre-cleaning, and cleaning. The pods sampled were manually peeled and the seeds of each step were subjected to determination of water content and the germination and vigor tests (first count, accelerated aging and electrical conductivity), and the seedling field emergence. There was a similar performance in the germination test, for all sampling times, with values above the recommended seeding. In the field the seeds showed poor performance, despite the high vigor appointed by the first count, accelerated aging and electrical conductivity tests, possibly seed dormancy were expressed. There was reduction on the seeds vigor in reason of the operations that occurred during the seed production process.