The Germinator automated germination scoring system

Abstract

Fundamental and applied seed biology research relies heavily on accurate quantification of seed germination. Nowadays, large-scale experiments using large genetic populations or mutant collections are popular tools to unravel the molecular aspects of seed development, germination, dormancy and seed performance. The scientific community has embraced Arabidopsis thaliana as the ultimate model species for plant science, and it has also become a very useful model plant to study seed biology. However, so far, germination of the very small A. thaliana seeds can only be evaluated by binocular microscope, making this a very laborious task. This often hampers the collection of cumulative germination data in large-scale experiments