Seed Osmo-priming in Chickpea Enhances Seed Quality and Crop Performance under Normal and Water Deficit Conditions

Abstract

Background: The average productivity of chickpea is quite low (939 kg/ha) because of several factors including its cultivation in rain fed/low moisture and marginal lands, low seed replacement rate (25.4%), use of old and low-quality seed by the majority of farmers. This in turn gives poor germination, delayed emergence and sick seedlings that lead to poor yield. Osmo priming of seed with different in-organic salts has been reported to improve the germination, speed of emergence, seedling vigour, growth and yield of different vegetable and field crops but information’s on response of seed priming with in-organic salts on enhancement of seed quality parameters and crop performance of naturally aged seeds of chickpea is lacking over a wide range of environmental conditions including normal and water deficit conditions.Methods: An experiment was conducted under laboratory as well as in plastic pots with 05 seed osmo- priming level, two varieties of chickpea (Ujjawal and JG-14) and two moisture level (Normal at field capacity and water deficit at half of the field capacity) during rabi season 2017-18 and 2018-19.at the Research farm of ICAR- IIPR Kanpur (U.P.) to study the influence of seed osmo-priming with in- organic salts on seed quality parameters and crop performance under normal and water deficit conditions. The observations were recorded on seed quality, growth and crop efficiency parameters at their appropriate time.Result: Osmo-priming of one-year-old chickpea seeds with KNO3, MgSO4, Ca(NO3)2 at 0.2% solution and tap water for 06 hours significantly enhanced the seed quality parameters in both the varieties evaluated under normal as well as under water deficit conditions over their respective control. Amongst, the priming agents used, KNO3 performed better than MgSO4, Ca(NO3)2 and tap water in respect of most of the seed quality parameters studied. Variety Ujjawal responded better the priming treatments than JG-14 under both normal and water deficit conditions. Osmo-priming treatments also showed the positive response in the enhancement of Nitrogen balance index (NBI), chlorophyll, Flavonols, Stomatal conductance, photosynthetic rate and transpiration rate in both the varieties evaluated under normal as well as water deficit condition.