1 Introduction

Jatropha curcas L. belongs to the family Euphorbiaceae, is native from the American tropics (Abhilash et al., 2010). This species can present as a small tree with 6 m in height (Sunil et al., 2013). J. curcas is a seed-bearing plant and can produce from 1500 to 2000 kg of seed per hectare/year or 540 to 680 liters of biofuel per hectare, considering that J. curcas seeds contain about 40% to 58% of oil (Pandey et al., 2012; Marcelo Francisco Pompelli et al., 2010). Moreover, J. curcas is a non-edible, eco-friendly, non-toxic, biodegradable fuel-producing plant that has attracted worldwide attention as an alternative sustainable energy source for the future (Dharma et al., 2017). This species can be cultivated on marginal and salt affected areas, without competing with crop food production (Elhag and Gafar, 2014). In general, more than 95% of the oil produced for biodiesel purposes comes from edible oils, like corn and soy, which can have a negative impact on food production (khan et al., 2014). Thus, J. curcas seeds seems as a good source of oil and it has great economic potential as an alternative biofuel (Berchmans and Hirata, 2008; Chen et al., 2008).

The seeds of J. curcas have a short viability period and they are more sensitive to salinity at germination (Elhag and Gafar, 2014; Moncaleano-Escandon et al., 2013). J. curcas is drought tolerant (Arcoverde et al., 2011; Marcelo F. Pompelli et al., 2010) and probably also has salinity tolerant (Lozano-Isla, in prep.).

Seed deterioration is a natural and irreversible process, even under ideal storage conditions (Castellión et al., 2010; Copeland and McDonald, 1999; Marcos-Filho, 1998; Moncaleano-Escandon et al., 2013). While deterioration is both irreversible and inevitable, the speed of the process can be controlled with appropriate harvesting, drying and storage techniques. There are several factors that are known to influence the progress of deterioration during seed storage. Both high temperatures and humidity during storage increase the deterioration speed of seeds (Copeland and McDonald, 1999; Pukacka et al., 2009), and decreasing either of these factors significantly increases the storage life of seeds (Castellión et al., 2010). Dry seeds suffer a variety of biochemical and metabolic changes, including lipid peroxidation, enzyme inactivation and rupture of cellular membranes (Alencar et al., 2015; Moncaleano-Escandon et al., 2013). In another way, seed imbibition is an important process in the plant life cycle and determines whether seed germination and plant growth will be successful or not (Ribeiro et al., 2015). In arid environments, the water needed for germination is available for only short periods and consequently, successful crop establishment depends not only on rapid and uniform germination of the seed, but also on the ability of the seed to germinate under low water availability (Windauer et al., 2007). The speed and uniformity of seed germination are prominent parameters especially for field crop seeds to compete with weed seeds (Ruttanaruangboworn et al., 2017). Water uptake is the fundamental requirement for the initiation and completion of seed germination (Koornneef et al., 2002). Studies on germination and seedling establishment which are the critical stages in the plant life cycle and in J. curcas have not been conducted. Knowledge of the capacity of the species to complete this stage successfully is fundamental for crop production (Windauer et al., 2011). Considerable variation was registered in J. curcas for seed germination, seedling growth and biomass parameters. The small value of error or environmental variances of the seedling growth traits suggests that the majority of characters are under genetic control (Ginwal et al., 2005).

Based on these, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the behavior of J. curcas seeds under different imbibition time, seed water relation and aspects about germination.

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