Performance of Scots Pine Seedlings from Seeds Graded by Colour

Conifer Biotechnology: An Overview

The peculiar characteristics of conifers determine the difficulty of their study and their great importance from various points of view. However, their study faces numerous important scientific, methodological, cultural, economic, social, and legal challenges. This paper presents an approach to several of those challenges and proposes a multidisciplinary scientific perspective that leads to a holistic understanding of conifers from the perspective of the latest technical, computer, and scientific advances. This review highlights the deep connection that all scientific contributions to conifers can have in each other as fully interrelated communicating vessels.

Discrete Seed Feeder Designing for Mobile Apparatus: Early Results for Pinus sylvestris L. Species

Discrete feeding of forest seeds is an urgent task for accurate detection of seeds during grading and reducing the seeding rate. The study used Pinus sylvestris L. seeds from cones collected in a natural stand of the Lisinsky educational-and-experimental forestry farm, Leningrad region, Russia, in 2017. Well-known methods for determining the properties of bulk materials were used; the results were processed by mathematical statistics using the MS Excel program. The physical and mechanical properties of uncalibrated seeds as a bulk material were determined. The angle of repose of Pinus sylvestris L. seeds, determined using a hollow cylinder by calculation, is 24.92°. The angle of repose of Pinus sylvestris L. seeds, determined using a hollow cylinder and a goniometer, is 32.7°. The significant discrepancy (~8°) in the values obtained by these methods is explained by the seeds shape. The flowability of Pinus sylvestris L. seeds corresponds to an excellent (free) category. The study will enable correct seed treatment protocols for sustainable forest management. However, some questions remained unresolved: how to orient a single seed in the right direction? How does seed-size calibration affect the angle of repose?

Grading of Scots Pine Seeds by the Seed Coat Color: How to Optimize the Engineering Parameters of the Mobile Optoelectronic Device

Research Highlights: There is a problem of forest seeds quality assessment and grading afield in minimal costs. The grading quality of each seed coat color class is determined by the degree of its separation with a mobile optoelectronic grader. Background and Objectives: Traditionally, pine seeds are graded in size, but this can lead to a loss of genetic diversity. Seed coat color is individual for each forest seed and is caused to a low error in identifying the genetic features of seedling obtained from it. The principle on which the mobile optoelectronic grader operates is based on the optical signal detection reflected from the single seed. The grader can operate in scientific (spectral band analysis) mode and production (spectral feature grading) mode. When operating in production mode, it is important to determine the optimal engineering parameters of the grader that provide the maximum value of the separation degree of seed-color classes. For this purpose, a run of experiments was conducted on the forest seeds separation using a mobile optoelectronic grader and regression models of the output from factors were obtained. Materials and Methods: Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) seed samples were obtained from cones of the 2019 harvest collected in a natural stand. The study is based on the Design of Experiments theory (DOE) using the Microsoft Excel platform. In each of three replications of each run from the experiment matrix, a mixture of 100 seeds of light, dark and light-dark fraction (n = 300) was used. Results: Interpretation of the obtained regression model of seed separation in the visible wavelength range (650–715 nm) shows that the maximum influence on the output—separation degree—is exerted by the angle of incidence of the detecting optical beam. Next in terms of the influence power on the output are paired interactions: combinations of the wavelength with the angle of incidence and the wavelength with the grader’s seed pipe height. The minimum effect on the output is the wavelength of the detecting optical beam. Conclusions: The use of a mobile optoelectronic grader will eliminate the cost of transporting seeds to and from forest seed centers. To achieve a value of 0.97–1.0 separation degree of Scots pine seeds colored fractions, it is necessary to provide the following optimal engineering parameters of the mobile optoelectronic grader: the wavelength of optical radiation is 700 nm, the angle of incidence of the detecting optical beam is 45° and the grader’s seed pipe height is 0.2 m.

Immersion Freezing of a Scots Pine Single Seed in a Water-Saturated Dispersion Medium: Mathematical Modelling

Forest owners will be able to solve the problem of protecting small forest seeds from mechanical and atmospheric influences during aerial sowing, as well as the problem of manufacturing capsules in the field, saving financial, time and material resources. The process of creating a capsule by freezing the seed in a water-saturated dispersed system—immersion freezing—allows you to organize the technological properties of forest seeds depending on the initial requirements. In most cases, the quality of the seed capsule is determined by the thermophysical and mechanical properties of the components. The technological process of obtaining seed capsules for aerial seeding and the choice of freezing modes is based on a priori mathematical modeling of heat-and-mass transfer processes. The main purpose of the study is to predict the duration of the seed freezing process in a capsule with a water-saturated dispersed medium, depending on the external temperature conditions, the geometric parameters of the capsule and the seed. The cooling agent is carbon dioxide. The research is based on the use of numerical modeling methods on the platform COMSOL Multiphysics. A mathematical model is proposed that allows us to obtain the dynamics of the distribution of temperature and moisture content fields in the dispersed system and seed depending on a complex of geometric and thermophysical factors. The time of immersion freezing of the capsule with the common pine seed for the conditions considered should be in the range of 150 to 250 s.