Vigour tests show little evidence for predictivity of carrot stand establishment in field trials

Successful stand establishment is a crucial step for the success of field-grown crop cultures. Carrot cultures are particularly susceptible to perturbations during seed germination and seedling emergence. A vigour test for carrot seeds to determine the capacity for emergence even under non-optimal conditions is thus of great interest. In our study, the results of 12 out of 17 field trials were correlated with the results of basic germination tests. The residual 5 field trials showed no important correlation with any other applied vigour test (temperature stress tests, conductivity, controlled deterioration, speed and homogeneity of radicle emergence, chlorophyll fluorescence and Ethanol consumption). In addition, the results of the 5 different instances were completely uncorrelated, hinting to important aleatory germination responses under adverse conditions. We conclude that additional seed vigour testing is of limited use for carrot seeds.