Standardization of Various Chemical Seed Priming on Seed Quality Parameters in Black Gram (Vigna mungo)

Black gram is an important pulse crop in India. It is a major source of dietary protein for the poor people and provides nutritional security. It is mostly grown by the small and marginal farmers under resource constraints situation particularly in rainfed and rice fallow conditions. Seed priming is one such effective technology to achieve high growth, vigor, better stand establishment. The current study aimed to study the standardization of various chemical on crop growth in black gram. A laboratory experiment was conducted in Factorial Completely Randomized Design (FCRD) with three replications using various concentrations (1%, 2%, 3% and 4 %) as first factor and different durations (4 and 6 h) of priming as second factor and different chemicals such as ZnSO4, MnCl2, MgSO4, CaCl2, KCl and KNO3 as third factor. Seeds were primed with different chemicals in different concentrations and in different duration evaluated for its quality parameters to find out suitable seed priming technique. Among all treatments seed priming with ZnSO4 1% for 6 hours recorded higher germination (98%), longest root length (22.17 cm), shoot length (19.15 cm), higher seedling dry matter production (0.93 g seedlings-10), fresh weight (8.93 g seedlings-10) and vigor index (4004) than control under laboratory experiment. The results indicate that use of ZnSO4 1% for 6 hours enhances the seed performance regarding seed quality characters.