  Seed priming is one of the well-established and low cost method to improve
seed germination properties, productivity, and stress tolerance in different
crops. It is a pre-germination treatment that partially hydrates the seed and
allows controlled imbibition. This stimulates and induces initial germination
process, but prevents radicle emergence. Consequently, treated seeds are
fortified with enhanced germination characteristics, improved physiological
parameters, uniformity in growth, and improved capability to cope up with
different biotic and abiotic stresses. Existing techniques for evaluating the
effectiveness of seed priming suffer from several drawbacks, including very
high operating time, indirect and destructive analysis, bulky experimental
arrangement, high cost, and require extensive analytical expertise. To
circumvent these drawbacks, we propose a biospeckle based technique to analyse
the effects of different priming treatments on germination characteristics of
seeds. The study employs non-primed (T0) and priming treatments (T1-T75),
including hydropriming and chemical priming (using three chemical agents namely
sodium chloride, potassium nitrate, and urea) for different time durations and
solution concentrations. The results conclusively establish biospeckle analysis
as an efficient active tool for seed priming analysis. Furthermore, the
proposed setup is extremely simple, low-cost, involves non-mechanical scanning
and is highly stable.
