Membrane potential of wheat grains under the influence of electric current as viability indicator

Sowing quality of wheat grains represents an important component of its consumer cost, competitiveness in the mar-ket and agricultural productivity. Viability of seeds of wheat represents one of the main indicators of their quality. Today for the assessment of viability of seeds of wheat the laborato-ry method based on State Standard 12038-84 is used. The duration makes from 10 to 14 days that is a major drawback of this method. However, there are alternative methods of the assessment of viability of seed material. They are based on researches of change of membrane potential, i.e. the method of measurement of parameters of potential of action and the method of research of potential of rest. The main advantage of these methods consists in reduction of time of determina-tion of viability. Each of presented methods represents me-chanical influence by electrode needle on wheat grains. And as change of membrane potential also causes electric cur-rent, membrane potential of grains of wheat arising at simul-taneous influence by electrode needle and electric current can act as an indicator of their viability. The research of membrane potential represents preliminary preparation of seed material, measurement and preprocessing of results on the basis of which the schedule of dependence for the analy-sis is under construction further. As a result of pilot studies it was revealed that wheat grains reacted to additional influence by electric current as high viability (96 %), and low viability (86 %). The amplitude of change of membrane potential for wheat grains with low viability made 0.006 B, and for grains with high viability - 0.020 V.