Author(s):

S Das and S Mohanty

Abstract: An investigation was undertaken in the Department of Seed Science and Technology, OUAT, Bhubaneswar to study the effect of a few priming treatments on enhancement of seed quality and improvement of subsequent performance of groundnut. Rabi 2016-17 harvested seeds of groundnut cv. ICGV 91114 with 92.0% germination were packed in HDPE containers and stored under ambient conditions for five months. At the end of the storage period the seeds had 69.0% germination. The partially-deteriorated seeds were subjected to priming treatments, viz. hydropriming of kernels for 2, 3, 4 and 5 hours and moist sand conditioning (MSC) of kernels for 24, 36, 48, 60 and 72 hours. An unprimed Control was maintained for comparison. After hydration, the seeds were dried back to original moisture content. Performance of the primed seeds was studied in a field trial during Rabi 2017-18. Priming of seeds significantly increased the germination percentage. MSC-24 hours gave highest germination (82.5%), followed by MSC-36 hours (79.50%), an increase of 20.0% and 15.6%, respectively, over the unprimed Control. Seeds without priming treatment gave the lowest germination of 68.75%. Priming treatments also resulted in higher SVI-I and lower EC of seed leachate. Highest field emergence of 75.60% was recorded in MSC-24 hours, followed by 74.4% in MSC-36 hours, as against 59.2% in unprimed seeds. The primed seeds also took less number of days to flowering initiation and maturity, with minimum number of days to flowering and maturity recorded in MSC-24 hours, followed by MSC-36 hours. The two treatments also recorded higher plant height, number of mature pods per plant, pod yield per plant and pod yield per hectare. MSC-24 hours produced highest pod yield of 1557.14 kg/ha followed by MSC-36 hours, hydropriming-3hours and MSC-48 hours. The crop raised from unprimed seed (T₁) recorded lowest pod yield of 1101.42 kg/ha. The yield advantage of moist sand conditioning of kernels for 24 hours was 41.4% compared to the unprimed Control. Priming treatments had no significant influence on the pod and seed characteristics of the produced seeds, viz., mean pod length, 100-pod weight, number of kernels per pod, shelling percentage, oil content and protein content. Similarly, no significant influence of the priming treatments was observed on germination of the produced seed and accelerated ageing test. However, lowest EC of seed leachate was recorded in seed produced from MSC-24 hours, while it was highest in unprimed Control. Therefore, moist sand conditioning of kernels for 24 to 36 hours (@ 1 part seed : 3 parts sand moistened with water 10% of its weight), followed by drying to the original moisture content, proved to be superior than other treatments and can be taken up as a low cost technique of improving the quality and performance of partially-deteriorated groundnut seeds.

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