Home Study Seed Propagation Course

Home Study Seed Propagation Course

We offer online courses for you and your family.

Various modifications and individual training from $29 per month for online books!

“Study the propagation of seeds”.

• Improve your understanding of plant propagation.
• Gain industry specific qualifications.
• Improve your job prospects.
• Learn from the best! Our tutors are highly qualified industry experts.

Please note this course requires a general foundation knowledge of plant propagation. If you have industry experience, or significant amateur experience, this course may contain some sections that are revision. However, for anyone with minimal or no knowledge of seed propagation, some additional reading may be required to gain the optimum benefit from the course.

Study the Propagation of Seeds

This course is relevant to all aspects of seed propagation, all types of seeds, and any climatic situation you might find yourself in.

Seeds can be propagated in many different ways, including:

• Sowing directly into the open ground.
• Sowing into natural soil, improved soil in a controlled environment (eg. in a greenhouse, with heating cables in the ground or in raised beds, and with irrigation).
• Sowing into specialised propagating media in a controlled propagating environment.

Many seedling production nurseries (both private and commercial) specialise in the production of specific types of plants for example:

• vegetable seedlings
• colourful annuals
• forestry trees
• natives trees for re-vegetation projects
• seedling trees for use as root stock
• ferns
• perennials
• biennials
• cut flowers
• herbs

COURSE STRUCTURE
There are nine lessons in this module as follows:

1. Introduction – scope, open ground propagation, controlled environment propagation
2. Seed Botany – anatomy and physiology, pollination, hybridisation, genetic purity, etc.
3. Seed Sources – selection, collection, timing, wild collecting
4. Seed Storage – treatments; cleaning, drying, storage, disease control, germination testing
5. Dormancy – and breaking dormancy
6. Germinating Annuals, Perennials and Vegetables
7. Propagating selected Woody Species
8. Direct Seeding – grasses, woody species, revegetation projects, etc.
9. Seedling Management

Duration: 100 hours

 Aims

• Discuss the scope and nature of commercial seed propagation.
• Explain the botany of seeds, and processes that occur when a seed germinates.
• Determine appropriate procedures for harvesting different seeds.
• Determine appropriate treatments for different types of seeds following harvest to sustain viability.
• Determine treatments for breaking dormancy to initiate germination with a range of different seeds.
• Determine how to sow and germinate seed of commonly grown herbaceous plants including vegetables, annuals and perennials.
• Determine techniques for woody plants including trees, shrubs, ground covers and climbers.
• Determine strategies for developing a variety of different types of plantings using direct seeding.
• Manage the development of germinated seedlings to optimise the plants survival.

Seed Storage Behaviour
Seeds are alive and like any living thing they can be harmed by adverse conditions. Seeds of some species do not store for very long at all – propagation should be done with fresh seed only. This group particularly includes spring-ripening seeds of certain temperate zone plants. Most seeds however will store for at least 6 months without loss of viability, provided the environmental conditions of their storage are right.

Seed storage behaviour refers to the capacity of seeds to survive desiccation (drying). The periods which seed survives (ie. its longevity) varies quite a lot among species. It also tends to vary among accessions (collections) within a species, because of differences in genotype and provenance. The influence that provenance and genotype have on the longevity of seed also depends on the following:

• the cumulative effect of environment during seed maturation eg. the weather
• harvesting, drying and the pre-storage environment
• seed harvest times
• time it takes to dry the seed
• the time taken between drying and storage

Where This Course Could Lead You
Every plant can be grown from seed, but not all plants are easily grown form seed. Often dormancy has to be broken in order for seeds to germinate. Sometimes a combination of treatments is necessary to break dormancy. Some seed only germinate when environmental conditions are within a tiny range. Students of this course develop a thorough grounding in methods and techniques of seed propagation. This is an ideal accompaniment to our other specialist propagation courses, but may also be studied by itself. The course will appeal to enthusiastic amateurs as well as people in the following fields:

• Nursery & Propagation
• Crops
• Hydroponics
• Market Gardening
• Garden Establishment
• General Horticulture
• Landscaping