Before considering some of the cellular and metabolic aspects
of dormancy, its breaking, and the resultant completion
of germination, it is worthwhile pondering why so little
progress has been made toward understanding dormancy.
Undoubtedly, one contributing factor is that we do not know
the defining events in germination. Without this information,
there are no “baseline” data with which to compare observations
made on dormant seeds that exhibit a block to germination.
However, studying germination is also difficult
because populations of seed do not complete the process
synchronously; release from dormancy can be even more
erratic because the threshold stimulus required to promote
germination varies widely among individual seeds. Recently,
a “biotime” concept has been introduced, which incorporates
a mathematical model to characterize and predict
seed germination behavior with respect to dormancy and
the factors that influence it (Bradford, 1996).