Quality of Castor the Seeds Stored in Different Environments and Type of Packaging

One of the ways to offer high quality seeds to the market is to work on better storage conditions to keep the physiological quality of the seeds high. Thus, this work aimed to evaluate the physiological quality of hybrid castor seeds during storage in different environments and packaging in the Cerrado conditions. A completely randomized design with plots subdivided over time was used, with four replications. In the plots the factorial 2x3x7 was designated, being- 2 environments (cold chamber and laboratory environment) and 3 packages (kraft paper, plastic bag and PET bottle) and in the subplots the 7 storage times (0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 months). The castor seeds used were from the hybrid cultivar AG IMA 110204 and were stored in the laboratory of the State University of Goiás, Câmpus Anápolis. The following tests were carried out- water content, germination test, first count, electrical conductivity, length, seedling dry mass and seedling dry mass density. The data were submitted to analysis of variance, the qualitative treatments when significant were compared by the Tukey test, while the quantitative treatments were submitted to the regression analysis. It is recommended to use both a plastic bag and a PET bottle to package AG IMA 110204 hybrid castor seeds during twelve-month storage, both in cold storage and in a laboratory environment.