Abstract
Milk thistle is a medicinal plant with high pharmaceutical properties to help relief of liver diseases. In this study, the effects of ultrasonic assisted seeds priming (20, 40, 80 and 160 s) with a frequency of 24 kHz and Power of 400 W was investigated on seed enhancement of aged seeds of Milk thistle. Results of the study, showed that as the aging damages increased, the longer sonication results in the better germination. Root growth was significantly improved using ultrasonic energy. Seeds aged for 24 hours, were exposed to ultrasonic produced for 20 seconds exhibited root length of 10.39 cm which was 5.48 cm with no ultrasonic treatment with the same aging duration. The maximum malondialdehyde activity was observed at the 96-hour aging treatment (87.83 nmol/grFW) while the lowest activity was observed at no aged and 24-hour aged seeds (7.28 nmol/grFW). It is suggested that there is a negative correlation between seedling vigor and MAD activity. It was revealed that fatty acid composition of Silybum marianum seed oil is highly influenced by the aging treatment. The variations of unsaturated fatty acids significantly increased in aged seeds. Our results showed that under accelerated aging conditions, ultrasonic assisted seed priming could not provide satisfactory enhancement to seed germination while no aged seeds germination was significantly improved using ultrasonic assisted seed priming.
Highlights
Milk thistle (Silybum marianum L.) is belong to daisy family (Asreraceae) which grows as winter annual or biennial plant and primarily propagated by its seeds (Adzet et al, 1993)
Ultrasonic assisted seed priming for the durations of 80 seconds successfully improved shoot growth of no aged seeds about 79% compared to no primed seeds (Table 1)
Our results showed that the accelerated aging caused significant reduction of seed germination quality and this might be due to membrane integrity losses beside of lipid peroxidation
Summary
Milk thistle (Silybum marianum L.) is belong to daisy family (Asreraceae) which grows as winter annual or biennial plant and primarily propagated by its seeds (Adzet et al, 1993). To investigate the interaction effect of accelerated aging and ultrasonic seed priming on the membrane integrity of treated seeds, the residual liquid after sonifications was tested for electrical conductivity and data were recorded for each individual treatment. Application of ultrasonic assisted seed priming for the durations of 40 seconds, alleviate root growth damage by accelerated aging treatment (24 hour) and produced longer roots (Table 1). Shoot length was only significantly influence by the accelerated aging durations of 96 hour At this aging treatment, ultrasonic seed priming did not exhibited any improvement of shoot growth compared to control. Germination percentage of no aged seeds was significantly reduced as the time of ultrasonic seed priming increased This treatment did not produce any satisfactory results of seed germination for the aged seeds except at 160 seconds (Table 1). Similar results were reported for chickpea (Kapoor et al, 2010) and cotton seeds (Goel et al, 2003)
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