Abstract
ABSTRACT Wild piquin pepper fruits are consumed and traded because of their flavor, nutritional and pharmaceutical properties. The heterogeneous germination of its seeds has caused pregermination treatments to be unstandardized. Because of that, our goal was to evaluate pregermination treatments of piquin pepper seeds from a wild plant from the municipality of Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico, consisting of immersion for different periods (2, 24, 48 h) in solutions with variable concentrations of the growth regulators naphthalene acetic acid (NAA; 0.1, 1.0, 2.5 mM), salicylic acid (SA; 1.0, 5.0, 10 mM), gibberellic acid (GA3, 1.0, 5.0, 10 mM), indole-3-butyric acid (IBA; 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 mM), the commercial product Biozyme (Bioz) containing minerals and growth regulators (Bioz; 0.5, 1, 2%), and sulfuric acid (H2SO4; 2, 5, 10%) in a completely randomized design, using distilled water as the control. For each treatment, we measured the imbibition ratio, germination percentage, time to obtain 50% germination (T50), and coefficient of variation of germination time (CVt). Our results showed that the imbibition was similar in the control and the treatments, but it differed between treatments. The highest imbibition recorded in 48 h was 87%. The highest germination percentage (79.2%) was achieved with 2 h immersion in 2% Bioz, followed by 1 mM NAA (62%) and 5 mM SA (56%). T50 and CVt were 10-26 d and 0-39%, respectively. According to our results, we concluded that the pregermination treatments we assayed improved the physiological potential for the germination of piquin pepper seeds.
Highlights
Capsicum annuum L. var. glabriusculum (Dunal) Heiser and Pickershill is a perennial plant in the Solanaceae family distributed from the southwestern U.S.A. to Colombia, which is considered to be the ancestor of all cultivated variants of chili peppers belonging to C. annuum (Hayano-Kanashiro; Gámez-Meza; MedinaJuárez, 2016)
The imbibition percentages of seeds immersed in Gibberellic acid. indole-3butyric acid (IBA) (GA3), naphthalene acetic acid (NAA), IBA, Bioz, salicylic acid (SA), and H2SO4 solutions were not significantly different from that in the control, regardless of the imbibition period (Figure 1 A-C)
We concluded that the pregermination treatments we assayed improved the physiological potential for the germination of piquin pepper seeds by modifying to obtain 50% germination (T50) and coefficient of variation of germination time (CVt)
Summary
Capsicum annuum L. var. glabriusculum (Dunal) Heiser and Pickershill (piquin pepper) is a perennial plant in the Solanaceae family distributed from the southwestern U.S.A. to Colombia, which is considered to be the ancestor of all cultivated variants of chili peppers belonging to C. annuum (Hayano-Kanashiro; Gámez-Meza; MedinaJuárez, 2016). Glabriusculum (Dunal) Heiser and Pickershill (piquin pepper) is a perennial plant in the Solanaceae family distributed from the southwestern U.S.A. to Colombia, which is considered to be the ancestor of all cultivated variants of chili peppers belonging to C. annuum (Hayano-Kanashiro; Gámez-Meza; MedinaJuárez, 2016). In their natural environment, wild piquin pepper plants associate with trees or shrubs that provide them shade, phytosanitary protection, and soil organic matter. In Mexico, local people harvest fruits from wild populations and cultivate plants for consumption and sale. The harvesting methods applied cause mechanical damage to the plants, and in extreme cases, their removal, which compromises their regeneration, lowers their productivity and decreases the population’s genetic diversity (Medina-Martínez et al, 2010)
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