Physiological performance of vegetable seeds at different times of hydropriming

Abstract

The production of high quality physiological seed is a major challenge for seed producers. In the search for lower cost conditioners arises the possibility of using hydropriming, which consists of a controlled hydration of seeds. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of this technique on lettuce, cabbage and tomato seeds, submitted to different times of imbibition in water. Eight periods of hydropriming in three vegetable crops were used, wherein for each of these was conducted a separate experiment. For lettuce and cabbage, periods tested were 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 hours and for tomato were of the periods 0, 24, 48, 72, 96, 120, 144 and 168 hours. The seeds of each treatment were submitted to the germination test and vigor to determine the physiological potential. For the tomato crop, the best answers to the average time of germination, emergence speed index and emergency field were found 72 hours of imbibition. As for the cabbage crop the best answers to these variables were obtained with 20 hours of imbibition. Lettuce did not respond positively to the imbibition times.