Despite the best efforts of seed companies to produce high quality seed, the seed of some species such as celery does not always perform as well as the industry demands. Much research has been conducted during the past 15 years to create synthetic seeds using encapsulated somatic embryos derived from tissue culture. These embryos are encapsulated in calcium alginate which keeps the embryos moist since they are not desiccation tolerant like normal seeds. When placed in water, these seeds germinate much like natural seeds. It was hoped that somatic embryos would germinate more uniformly and vigorously than natural seeds, but they did not.

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