Intensive cropping influences the success of seed dormancy breaking methods in Australian collected Hordeum, Avena and Bromus sp.

Recent AHRI research by an international team including Aniruddha Maity from Auburn University, USA, with help from Dr Mike Ashworth and Roberto Lujan Rocha from AHRI, is shedding some light on this seed dormancy.  They investigated Barley grass, Wild oats and Brome grass from cropping fields in Western Australia to find, as has been confirmed in the past, that the seeds of these weeds are more dormant than those from uncropped areas.

They then went on to work out what is causing this dormancy and how to break it, finding that the winning combination was sandpaper, darkness and cold.