Germination Test

[crmauch]

I'm having some trouble with some seed of some of the varieties of tomato seeds I've received by trade this year. In particular, I'm having trouble with getting a breeding tomato variety, 97L97, to germinate. 97L97 is a descendent of L. cheesmani, which I understand is nortoriously hard to germinate. I had over 80 seeds, so I've attempted to design an experiment to use part of them. I don't have a solid idea of the seeds viability, but I wanted to design a test to see if different conditions aided or retarded seed germination.

Hypothesis: Different seed conditioning methods may aid or retard seed germination.

All seeds will be started on damp paper towels stored in ziploc style sandwich bags.

4 seed preparation methods:
1) None (Control). Seeds from packet were placed directly on damp paper towel and sealed in ziploc (sealed bag is labelled). 10 seeds

2) Water soak. Seeds were soaked in tap water for about 9 1/2 hours, removed and placed on damp paper towel and sealed in ziploc (sealed bag is labelled). 9 seeds (one seed was lost after soaking).

3) Bromelain treatment. Bromelain is an enzyme (often derived from pineapple), that breaks down proteins. Back when I was briefly involved in rose breeding, it was a popular treatment to attempt to break dormancy on rose seeds. One advantage of bromelain vs. bleach is that oversoaking in bromelain does not seem to affect viability, while bleach soaking can kill seeds. One bromelain capsule was openned and the contents 'disolved' (it doesn't blend easily into water) into about 1/2 C H2O. I've had these capsules a number of years so my Bromelain may no longer be 'good'. Seeds were soaked for about 7 1/2 hours, removed and placed on damp paper towel and sealed in ziploc (sealed bag is labelled). 10 seeds

4) Bleach treatment. This is the method recommended by TGRC: http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/seed_germ.aspx They recommend this for difficult to start seeds and even seeds that have been stored over-long.
The seeds were soaked in 1 C of 2.7% bleach solution for 1/2 hour and then rinsed. They were placed on damp paper towel and sealed in ziploc (sealed bag is labelled). 10 seeds

All seeds were started on 4/5/2014 -- though not all at the same time.

Note: Since I had the bleach solution, after soaking and preparing the 97L97, I soaked CaroRich seeds (which I've also had problem with this year) and started 10 seeds of them on a damp paper towel.

Possible results and problems: if none of the seeds germinate, I can pretty much assume my seeds are not viable. If however, all my seeds germinate, I won't know if what I did has an effect. I'm hoping to see a differential between my control and the treated seeds. I added a simple water soak after I designed my original experiment to try to eliminate the 'soaking' as a positive or negative variable in seed prep. One problem I realize is my sample size is very small. So if one type of treament yields 6 seeds germnating and the other 9, the sample size is so small I shouldn't overdraw the conclusion that one method is better than the other. As I check for results, I'll post the them to this thread.

1st Observation (4/7/2014): No germinations.