Seed viability assay (TTC Method)The freshly isolated seeds were placed in a 1.5 mL centrifuge tubecontaining 1% 2,3,5-triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC, SigmaAldrich, USA) aqueous solution {dissolving 1 g TTC in 100 mL ofsodium phosphate buffer solution (pH 7.4)} and the treated seedswere incubated at 25§1°C for 24 h in darkness. The seeds were thenexamined under a stereo microscope Zeiss (Discovery.V20) CL 1500ECO after removing extra stain by rinsing with distilled water at leastthree times. The seeds stained red were counted as viable andunstained as non-viable (Fig. 1). The experiment was replicated thriceand the average numbers of seeds per replicate were 450.