Differential ability of alcohol fermentation between the seeds of flooding-tolerant and flooding-susceptible varieties of Echinochloa crus-galli (L.) Beauv.

Seed germination and respiratory metabolism under aerobic and anaerobic conditions were studied in the flooding-tolerant and flooding-susceptible varieties of Echinochloa crus-galli with an identical genome and common ancestry . In the flooding-tolerant E. crus-galli var. formosensis , the seeds imbibed under nitrogen could germinate and exhibited an I/N quotient > 0.6. They accelerated glycolysis and concomitantly produced large and equimolar quantities of carbon dioxide and ethanol, suggesting that the seeds of this variety showed operation of the Pasteur effect and respired through alcohol fermentation under anaerobic conditions. The seeds excreted most of the toxic fermentation product. In contrast, the seeds of the flooding-susceptible E. crus-galli var. praticola were capable of germinating only under aerobic conditions through the conventional aerobic respiration and were unable to anaerobically respire to germinate through alcohol fermentation regardless of the presence of both sufficient alcohol dehydrogenase activity and a high redox charge of the pyridine nucleotides.