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Psoralea corylifolia L. is an important medicinal plant in Chinese medicine. It is an annual herb, bears a single seeded pod. The pericarp of the seed is sticky and oily which contains coumarins, of which Psoralen and Isopsoralen are therapeutically important. It has been used in treating leprosy and psoriasis, eczema and hair loss. Psoralea is propagated through seeds, when the crop is cultivated commercially, the availability of good quality seed is become more crucial. The quality seeds can be made available through standard seed testing procedures accepted across the international countries. So to check verify such quality characters, seed testing procedures are highly warranted. For many crops the seed testing procedures were already standardized but the growing medicinal plant like Psoralea corylifolia there is no standard procedure, hence this study was designed to identify the standard seed testing procedures. In this book different tests conducted in seed testing laboratories, methodologies and their results were discussed. I hope that the book will be highly useful resource material, to standardize the seed testing procedures for other crops.

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S.Sumathi, completed her M.Sc.(Ag), Ph.D.in Seed Science and Technology from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India. At present she is working as Research Associate in same university. She has published 15 research papers in national and international journals and authored in 10 book chapters.

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