Effect of Embryo Weight and Seed Priming on Seedling Characteristics of Different Maize Cultvars

Abstract

Abstract An laboratory experiment was carried out during the year 2020 at the Seed Technology Laboratory of the Crop Department - College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences - University of Baghdad in order to know the effect of seed priming and size of their embryos of different cultivars of maize on the seedling characteristics. The experiment was carried out in a completely randomized design with four replicates. The first factor included three synthetic cultivars of maize (Al-Maha, Baghdad 3 and Al-Fajr) and Al-Nahrain hybrid. For the second factor, it included the priming of seeds with ASA, CK, GA3, KCL, H2O2, DW and DS, in addition to the dry seeds (without priming). The seeds were soaked with solutions of these substances for 24 hours and six characteristics related to the germination process were estimated, which were the weight of the seed after stimulation, the weight of the embryo, the time of germination, the length of the radicle and shoot, and its dry weight. The results showed that the seed priming with H2O2 was significantly superior, as it gave the highest average of seed weight, lowest average germination time, longest average radiclelength and highest seedling dry weight (0.336 g, 3.12 days, 15.08 cm and 0.215 g, respectively). The treatment of seeds with ascorbic was superior in giving the highest average weight of the embryo that reached 0.049 gm, the treatment of stimulating the seeds with gibberellin was superior in giving the highest mean of the coleoptile length of 10.79 cm. Al-Maha cultivar excelled in giving it the highest average seed weight, embryo weight, radiclelength and dry weight, as it reached 0.335 g, 0.050 g, 14.42 cm and 0.194 g, respectively. Whereas, the Fajr cultivar was significantly superior by giving the highest average coleoptile length of 9.37 cm. The interaction effect between the study factors was significant in most of the studied traits.