Abstract
Hyphaene petersiana is a naturally occurring palm tree in Zimbabwe. The tree provides an important supplementary source of income to the communities where it is found, with a high demand for foliage for making baskets and sap for wine making. Propagation is both by vegetative and sexual methods, however, sexual propagation is constrained by the inherent dormancy of the seeds. Breaking seed dormancy is also the first step towards developing a conservation programme for the tree. The effect of water soaking (for 12, 24 and 48 hours), chemical scarification (sulphuric acid for 10 minutes), de-husking (tegument removal), sand papering as well as chemical treatment (thiourea and potassium nitrate) were compared with untreated seeds (control). No germination was observed for seeds treated with sulphuric acid. Water soaking for 12 hours gave the highest germination (71.7%) although not significantly different to other treatments.
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