Vegetable Seed Production

Abstract

Unlike field crops where the cultural practices of raising seed crops are mostly similar to the commercial crops, in case of the vegetables, not only the seed crops are grown for a much longer duration than the crops raised for the vegetable purpose, they often also have critical requirements of photoperiods, temperatures, humidity and precipitation. Moreover, compared to field crops, most of vegetable seeds are considered high value and low volume, and hence these require specific care in pre-harvest stages, i.e. isolation and roguing, during harvesting and extraction, and post-harvest operations such as drying, processing, packaging and storage. Due to their vast diversity in growth pattern, induction of flowering and pollination behaviour, seed production procedures need to be followed for each group, e.g. cole crops, cucurbits, leafy vegetables, root crops, solanaceous, malvaceous crops, etc. General principles and standard practices in vegetable seed production are provided in this chapter.