Effect of Plant Density and Harvest Data on Some Seeds Quality Characteristics of Pea Crop Pisum sativum L. var. Progress No.9

An Experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of plant density and harvest dates on some characteristics of pea seeds quality Pisum sativum var. Progress No. 9, at the National Center for Multiplication and Handling of Improved Seeds Station in Sidi Al-Masry, Tripoli, Libya. The experiment was laid out in RCBD Design with two factors, seed distances within row 10,20 and 30 cm and two harvest dates with three replicates each. Recorded data were weight of a thousand seeds gram, the degree of electrical conductivity of the seeds soak μmos/cm/g, germination percentage, and the protein percentage of the seeds. Results showed that there were no significant effects(P<0.05) of planting distances on seed germination percentage, while the weight of one thousand seeds increased significantly (P<0.05) from 304.9 to 310.7 gram with increasing in planting distances from 10 to 30 cm, respectively. Electrical conductivity of the soak seeds decreased from 17.908 to 14.726 μmos/cm/g, with the increase in plant distance from 10 to 30 cm respectively. Chemical seed analysis showed that there was a significant increase (P<0.05) in protein seed percentages from 20.3 to 23.1%. with increasing in planting distances from 10 to 30 cm, respectively. Results showed that the see quality parameters were significantly affected (P<0.05) by harvest date, weight of 1000 seeds increased from 302.7 to 311.2-gram, electrical conductivity of the seed infusion were 19.478 and 13.743 µmos/cm/g, percentage of seed germination were 96.4 and 98.08%, and the seed protein percentage were 20.4 and 23.4% at early and late harvest, respectively. The results showed that interaction between planting distances and harvest date did not have a significant effect (P<0.05) in seed percentage germination and degree of electrical conductivity of the seed infusion, but it has a significance effect (P<0.05) on weight of 1000 seeds.