Correlation between seed size with germination and the plant establishment of monogerm sugar beet seed

The quality and quantity of the sugar produced from sugar beet is strongly dependent  on optimizing plant spacing in the field. Poor germinability and, in particular, low plant establishment, has long been a problem in sugar beet production, particularly in precision drill sowing systems designed to omit thinning, which is a time consuming process with high labor costs. In addition to physical and environmental stresses accruing in the field during germination and seedling emergence, fruit size and the physiological characteristics of the fruit itself have also been considered as very important factors involved in poor plant establishment. This experiment was carried out using samples of three lots of a diploid monogerm cultivar(9597) which was released in Iran in 1985 and continues to be produced by the Sugar Beet Seed Institute of Iran (S.B.S.I.). According to the germination capacity of ungraded fruits, these lots were categorized as medium (lOT A), low(LOT B) and high (LOT C) quality lots and were selected to determine whether there was any similarity in the relationships between fruit size and quality within different lots. Despite there being a linear and highly significant correlation (r=0.96***) between fruit diameter and germination as well as fruit diameter and plant establishment in the low quality lot, the nature of these relationships in the medium and high quality lots were different in that the large fruits showed equal or lower germination and planting value than the medium fruit sizes. No apparent relationship was found between fruit thickness and germination performance of the seed lots.