Vacuum sealing seeds?
 

I'm in the drying phase of putting up Ronde De Nice squash seeds harvested from this year's crop. I have a Nesco VS-12 vacuum sealer and wondering if it would be a good method of storing the seeds through this winter.
I've got around 100 seeds drying so I can still store some of them in other conventional methods.
Anyone use a vac sealer to do this?

II just use a regular freezer bag and press most of the air out. I also put a moisture absorber inside, like you get in a bottle of vitamins and then store in the fridge.


I also store seeds in a Mason jar in a chest freezer that stays below zero. Not recommended to store in a defrost freezer.

There’s no reason you can’t use a vacuum sealer. Is your goal to store them for a long time? If so, temperature and moisture control are still both important even if you vacuum seal.

I would be reluctant to vacuum seal seeds as you would be removing nearly all the oxygen in the bag/container. The seeds, being alive still respire and need access to oxygen.

Geri Guidetti - the founder of the Ark Institute


No, the seeds, grains, beans do not necessarily become dead food when the oxygen is removed. In fact, according to the National Seed Storage Laboratory in Fort Collins, CO--our official national seed bank--research shows no measurable difference in seed/grain viability for a majority of seeds whether stored in air, CO2, N2, or vacuum. If sufficiently dried, all of these seeds are effectively dormant to the point that the surrounding gas mix, or lack thereof, is insignificant to storage. Note, too, that we are talking viability, here--the ability for the seed to grow after storage. Seeds do respire at an extremely slow rate, however, which can be measured with a small increase in carbon dioxide gas after many years of storage.

Now, the presence of air with its high O2 content will eventually cause beans to harden, but if kept in cold or freezing temperatures and DRY, they should be viable for germination for many years. They will, however, take longer to cook.


The rest of the article-
[url]https://www.usaemergencysupply.com/information-center/self-reliance/seed-viability-in-long-term-storage/seed-viability-myths[/url]

My harvested RDN seeds are now vacuum sealed and in the freezer. The "A1" designation are those seeds that after a couple of hours first sunk in a bucket of water. "A2" are those that sunk after two days. I did plant three of each in a six-pack starter to check for actual germination.
My vac sealer has two settings for the actual vacuum process, one standard and the other is pulse. This seed set was done in the standard mode, the next seed set will be pulsed as to not take all the air out of the pouch.
It's going to be a long wait until next spring but at least I've got the process started.