“…The results of the initial characterization showed that, although all the fruits had been collected when they were ripe, their embryos showed maturation differences: those of RIB, for example, were closer to physiological maturity than the others, because: a) although the embryos from all regions had very high water content, above 50%, typical for species of the genus Inga (Mata et al, 2013;Schulz et al, 2014), those from RIB had the lowest water potential. This result indicates more binding sites, therefore a better structured matrix (Vertucci and Farrant, 1995); b) the embryos accumulated more dry weight (Marcos-Filho, 2015); c) they had a lower respiration rate, indicating that they were among more mature embryos (the more mature, the lower the respiratory rate, Araujo and Barbedo, 2017) and embryos that had already started germination (the more advanced in germination, the higher the respiratory rates, Hell et al, 2019); d) they had the longest mean germination time, indicating that they had not started germination before harvest, which is relatively common for embryos of this species (Andreo et al, 2006;Bonjovani and Barbedo, 2020).…”