Effect of chemopriming on physiological quality of cucumber (Cucumis sativus)

Abstract

Seed priming has gained a lot of importance in recent times as it emerged as a most promising area of seed quality enhancement technique. Cucumber seeds were subjected to seed priming with various chemicals - water, KNO3 (1%), KH2PO4 (1%), GA3 (25ppm), succinic acid (100ppm), salicylic acid (0.5%) and ethrel (100ppm) with different soaking durations of 6, 8, 10 and 12 h and evaluated the physiological quality parameters. The results revealed that among the chemo priming treatments, GA3 (25ppm) and KNO3 (1%) with 12 h soaking duration registered significantly higher values of germination (%), shoot and root length (cm), dry matter production(g 10 seedlings-1) and vigour index. The percentage increase for vigour index of GA3 and KNO3 treatments was by 19.8% and 18.3 % respectively over hydro primed seeds.