Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi-221005, Uttar Pradesh, India
*Corresponding author email id: amitavar@bhu.ac.in
In a plant life cycle, seed germination and seedling establishment are vital stages as these are the decisive stages for onset and yield of a crop. Current experiment was conducted to find the effect of different seed priming options on seedling development of sunflower in pot culture experiment under greenhouse conditions. The results of our experiment revealed that the key parameters of seedling development such as plant height (30.2 cm), no. of leaves (8.33), stem girth (1.03 cm), root length (5.54 cm), shoot weight (0.27g), root weight (0.08g) and leaf area (46 cm2) of sunflower seedlings were found maximum in the treatment of sole bio-priming with Trichoderma viride as compared to rest of the priming treatments. Root length, root weight and no. of leaves in the bio-primed treatment were comparable to hormonal priming and the least was noticed in control. Root shoot ratio was found highest (0.52) in hormonal priming and least was in RDF (0.3). Leaf chlorophyll content was not varied significantly with imposed treatments.
Seed priming, Seedling growth, Plant development, Sunflower
