Dormancy and overcoming treatments in seeds of forest species

Abstract

Dormancy as is the condition in which viable seeds do not germinate even under favorable environmental conditions. It is noticed in the literature that there are divergences regarding the presence or not of dormancy in seeds of forest species and also about the type of dormancy and the treatment to be carried out when it is present. The objective of this study was, by means of a literature review, to report disagreements regarding the existence and type of dormancy in the seeds of 85 native and exotic species of the flora of Brazil and to present inconclusive cases that require evaluation by the scientific community. For this, a bibliographic survey was carried out on studies regarding the dormancy of seeds of these species. The literature review gathered 249 articles, with which seed dormancy was ratified and not ratified in 78 and 17% of the 85 species. For 5% of the studied species, it was not possible to state whether they were dormant or not due to the scarcity of information in the literature. In species with dormancy, the predominant type is physical, with mechanical and chemical scarification techniques being used in 41.5 and 31%, respectively, to overcome dormancy. The present study found and signaled the need for further studies to clarify the existence of dormancy in certain species, as well as the type of dormancy and the adoption of treatment to overcome it.