evaluation of germination traits and mechanical damage to soybean seed during processing, under standard germination, electrical conductivity and accelerated aging tests

to evaluate the germination traits and mechanical damage of soybean seed during processing stages, anexperiment was conducted in a factorial experiment based on completely randomized design with 18treatments at mazandaran province (sari) in 2009-10. the experiment factors included different seedprocessing stages (before cleaning, after elevator, after pre cleaning, after cleaning, after drying and afterpackaging) and three cultivars (‘telar’, ‘sari’ and ‘line 033’). results showed that cultivar 033 had thehighest germination percentage (83.5%), germination percentage after accelerated aging (71.6%) andseedling vigor index (12.76) and lowest electrical conductivity (41.73μscm-1gr-1) and it was noticed that‘telar’ cultivar had the highest cracked seed percentage (10.38). effect of different seed processing stepswas significant on all traits. so that, the lowest germination percentage (78.36%), highest rate of brokenseed percentage (16.72%) and highest cracked seed percentage (13.55%) was obtained after elevator step.interaction effect of cultivar × different processing steps were not significant on all traits, but meanscomparison showed that the highest (86.9%) was obtained in 033 cultivar after drying step and lowest(77.8%) germination percentage was attained from ‘telar’ cultivar after elevator.