Integrated Growing Environment, Medium and Priming Significantly Affect Sweet Pepper Seedling Establishment Characteristics

Sweet pepper (Capsicum annum L.) is among highly consumed vegetables in the world. It is rich in vitamins, minerals, and pharmaceuticals. Meeting the growing global demand remains a challenge since production has been dwindling in some countries, partly due to challenges encountered during seedling production that is governed by a myriad of factors and contributes to over 50% of overall crop production. This study determined the combined effects of environment, medium, and priming on sweet pepper ‘Admiral F1’ seedling establishment. It was done in a three-way factorial arrangement of 3 environments x 4 media x 3 primings in a completely randomized design with three replications and two trials. Data was recorded on environmental conditions, media characteristics, sweet pepper seedling height (SH), collar diameter (CD), number of leaves (NL), fresh weight (FW), dry weight (DW), and Dickson Quality Index (DQI). Data was subjected to analysis of variance using SAS version 9.4. Significant means were separated using the LSD test at α=0.05. Seedling establishment in trial 1 was lower than in trial 2. Furthermore, environment, medium, and priming (P) had significant (P=0.0001) effects on seedling establishment characteristics. The seedlings that were significantly (P=0.0001) tallest (SH), sturdiest (DQI), and thickest (CD) were for lathhouse, open-field, and greenhouse environments, respectively. Hygromix (H) had highest characteristics that were significantly (P=0.0001) different. Halo- and hydro-priming had highest characteristics that were significantly (P=0.0001) different from those of no priming. Thus, the suitable environment, medium and priming depended on the seedling characteristic. The HP1L gave the earliest, best performance of 10.4 cm SH, 3.17 mm CD, 6-well-developed leaves at 35 days after sowing (DAS), and DQI of 0.375 at 56 DAS, indicating that the three factors interacted significantly in influencing sweet pepper seedling establishment. Consequently, this study recommends geminating sweet pepper seeds in hygromix (H) after halo-priming (P1), followed by establishing in a lathhouse (L) to obtain high quality seedlings that should potentially generate high yields and income.