Packaging materials, moisture content and association studies among seeds traits of onion during long term storage (Allium cepa L.)

Abstract

The lab experiment was conducted at the Seed Unit, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad and Department of Seed Science and Technology, College of Agriculture, Dharwad from July, 2016 to March, 2018 with 12 treatment combinations like seeds which are dried by using zeolite beads stored in four packaging materials (aluminum foil pouch, polythene bag (700 gauge), polythene bag (300 gauge), and cloth bag as control) at three levels of moisture content (7.00, 5.00 and 3.00%) to know the response of seed physiological and biochemical traits during long term storage. The design of experiment adopted was Completely Randomized Design with two factorial concept and was replicated thrice. At the end of the 20 months of storage, seed germination exhibited strong positive correlation with protein content (99.00%), seedling vigour index-I (99.80%), peroxidase activity (99.90%), catalase activity (97.40%), SOD activity (99.10%), SVI-II (99.80%), speed of germination (99.40%) and field emergence (99.90%). Germination reported strong negative association with MDA (98.60%) and EC (99.80%). Field emergence showed strong positive association with protein content (99.20%), seedling vigour index-I (99.90%), peroxidase activity (99.80%) catalase activity (97.90%) SOD activity (98.70%), SVI-II (99.90%) and speed of germination (99.50%), whereas, It had strong negative association with MDA (97.90%) and EC (99.60%). Electrical conductivity showed strong negative correlation with protein content (98.10%), seedling vigour index-I (99.40%), peroxidase activity (99.70%), catalase activity (97.40%), SOD activity (98.90%), SVI-II (99.30%) and speed of germination (99.30%), whereas, it showed strong positive correlation with MDA content (98.90%). SOD exhibited strong positive correlation with protein content (98.10%), seedling vigour index-I (98.50%), peroxidase activity (99.30%) and catalase activity (95.30%), while, strong negative correlation was found with MDA content (98.50%).