Determining physiological potential in black oats seeds shows some difficulties due to the lack of standardized tests. On the other hand, the measuring the electric conductibility of the seed immersion solution can be a fast method, that can be applied to oats seeds, because it indicates the integrity of cellular membranes, and gives us, indirectly, the information about the physiological quality of the seeds. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the number of seeds and the imbibition time over the electrical conductivy of the solution, in the evaluation of the strength of oats seeds with and without shell. The experiment was conducted using three lots of common oats seeds. The test was made at 25º C, imbibition testing times of 4, 8 and 16 hours, with 25 and 50 seeds. The treatments constituted a factorial, using a complete randomized design with four repetitions. The use of 25 black oat seeds without shell in 75mL distilled water, with an imbibition time of eight hours, was enough to stratify the lots in different strength levels.
Avena strigosa Schieb.; physiological potential; forage specie
