1Sivaslı County Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry, Uşak, Türkiye
2Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Isparta University of Applied Sciences, 32260, Isparta, Türkiye
*Corresponding Author: Süleyman Kavak, Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Isparta University of Applied Sciences, 32260, Isparta, Türkiye, Email: suleymankavak@isparta.edu.tr
Seed vigour is considered one of the most important seed quality criteria for achieving rapid and uniform emergence and good stand establishment in plant production. The present study was conducted to determine which seed vigour tests best predict field emergence of cowpea seed lots.
Standard germination (SG), cool germination (CG, 18°C), single seed conductivity (SSC) and bulk seed conductivity (BSC) tests were conducted to estimate field emergence (FE) of eleven white-seeded cowpea lots with germination percentages ≥85%. Field emergence tests (FE-1 and FE-2) were conducted at two different seed sowing dates in early spring.
The BSC of seeds from 11 seed lots varied from 17.3 to 41.6 μS cm-1 g-1, while SSC varied from 63.7 to 130.5 μS cm-1 g-1. Field emergence of 11 seed lots ranged from 53 to 79% for FE-1, from 61 to 93% for FE-2 and statistically significant differences were found between seed lots in both FE tests. Both SSC and BSC methods showed significantly higher negative correlations than standard germination and cool germination tests with FE-1 (r=-0.794 and r=-0.891, p<0.01) and FE-2 (r=-0.899 and r=-0.954, p<0.01), respectively. Therefore, both the SSC and BSC methods can be used to predict field emergence of white-seeded cowpeas.
Cool germination, Cowpea, Electrical conductivity, Field emergence, Seed vigour
