Improving Aged Maize Seeds Germination with Fructose Priming by Response Surface Optimization Analysis and Its Verification

Seed priming is an important seed treatment technique to improve seed germination traits. In this experiment, Fucheng 796 corn seeds with high and low vigor after artificial aging were treated with fructose priming for response surface analysis and validation. For low-vigor seeds, Response Surface Analysis (RSA) identified the optimal priming combination (20 mg/L fructose, 18 h), which resulted in a 14.96% increase in shoot length compared to the uninitiated control, with a relative difference of -19.91% between predicted and actual values. High-vigor seeds exhibited the best root and stem fresh weight response at 75.79 mg/L (11.04 h) and 65.49 mg/L (12.07 h), which increased by 63.53% and 25.68%, respectively, over the control, with the least prediction deviation (0.11% and 2.74%). RSA was performed on all seed germination index data obtained from the priming assay. High-vigor seeds treated with 20 mg/L for 16.02 h showed a significant increase in seed germination (day 3) and other traits (relative deviation: -11.97% to 37.78%), whereas the low-vigor seeds (89.53 mg/L for 16.83 h) showed moderate deviation (-12.16% to 7.06%). The screened fructose combinations promoted seed germination to different degrees in both high and low vigor seeds, with all indices except root length significantly higher than the control. The results indicated that fructose priming could promote the germination of aged maize seeds, and the RSA method was suitable for the analysis of high-vigor maize seeds.