13TSB_ACT Novel biomaterial engineering technologies, molecular and hormone analyses to improve lettuce seed priming and production in stressful envir

Our pre-industrial feasibility study is a multi-disciplinary approach with novel biomaterial engineering technologies and advanced molecular and hormone analytic techniques to provide innovative and sustainable solutions for the diagnostics, management, and further improvement of the lettuce seed priming process. The collaboration between Germains Seed Technology (Norfolk) and the seed science lab at Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL, Leubner/Steinbrecher) have the knowledge and expertise to employ a custom-built leading-edge biomechanical device, novel imaging and beyond-state-of-the art seed hormone analytics to explore their potential as diagnostic tools to monitor and further improve the lettuce priming process. Germains offers lettuce seed priming to the UK and European market as it provides fast and uniform germination, and sturdy and uniform lettuce seedlings to ensure improved primary leafy salad crop production even in stressful environments.

Seed priming is used by seed technology companies to enhance arable and horticultural food production and is especially important for vegetable seeds like lettuce. It is a powerful seed processing methodology to enhance the quality of the seed sown for primary crop production. Primed seed provides fast and uniform germination, and vigorous seedling etablishment even in stressful environments. Due to thermo- and photo-inhibition lettuce and other leafy salad seeds are especially prone to high temperatures and darkness which may occur in the seedling production environment. Specialist plant raisers have the all-important job of growing salad seeds into sturdy seedlings and this is achieved in large temperature-controlled greenhouses (energy costs) in the UK. It is the uniformity and sturdiness of these seedlings handed over to UK salad crop growers which are the cornerstone of modern leafy salad primary crop production. Seed priming alleviates thermo- and photo-inhibition and ensures rapid and uniform establishment of sturdy lettuce seedlings and thereby can directly affect the uniformity and yield of UK leafy salad primary production. Germains Seed Technology (Kings Lynn, Norfolk, www.germains.com) primes lettuce seeds for customers and offers specific priming processes as products to the UK and European market. It competes with other seed technology companies for the best priming product and does not have the knowledge and technologies to further improve and monitor its lettuce priming protocol. To do this would require fundamental insight into the mechanisms underlying the priming process and innovative novel technologies to further improve it beyond what has already been achieved by Germains and its competitors. Germains therefore wants to conduct a pre-industrial research feasibility study with the renowned UK seed science lab of Prof G Leubner and Dr T Steinbrecher (Royal Holloway University of London, RHUL, www.seedbiology.eu) to explore and evaluate the potential of using their novel technologies of biomaterial enineering and seed hormone analytics as diagnostic tools for monitoring and further improving the lettuce seed priming process. In a multi-disciplinary collaboration between RHUL and Germains, we wish to generate research evidence and evaluate if these technologies are suited as diagnostic tools to further improve lettuce seed priming.

Seed priming is conducted by seed technology companies improve the quality of vegetable seeds including lettuce. Primed lettuce seeds provide alleviated dormancy, fast and uniform germination, followed by sturdy and uniform seedlings to ensure improved primary leafy salad crop production even in stressful environments. In this multi-disciplinary collaboration project between Germains Seed Technology (Norfolk, www.germains.com) and the seed science lab at Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL, Prof G Leubner and Dr T Steinbrecher, www.seedbiology.eu) we will use novel biomaterial engineering technologies, growth imaging and molecular/hormone analytics to provide innovative diagnostic tools which will enable to further improve the lettuce seed priming process. The feasibility and commercial potential of these novel agricultural technologies will be explored with the vision to further improve priming, plantlet raising and primary crop production of leafy salad.

The impact is described on the TSB application form for this competition.