Establishing seed germination and seedling vigour in Jyotishmati (Celastrus paniculatus Willd.)

Jyotishmati (Celastrus paniculatus Willd.) is an important medicinal trailing plant of Celastraceae family. The seeds constitute a drug with bitter taste and unpleasant odour useful in the treatment of ulcers, rheumatism, scabies, body and rheumatic pains, wound healing, eczema, beriberi, depression, hysteria, gout and also used as tonic, emetic, diaphoretic and febrifuge. Its germination is problematic as it encounters dormancy after harvest. Therefore, an attempt was made to examine whether seeds possess physical, physiological, or chemical dormancy in both small and bold graded seeds. Results on a variety of presowing treatment, plant growth regulators and under net house condition were interesting and significant. Results revealed that under control mean germination percentage was hardly 3.4 and 1.7% in small and bold seeds, respectively. Individually it was GA₃ @ 300 ppm which exhibited maximum germination of 39.4% at 30°C in small seeds followed by NaHClO₃ for 15 min exhibiting 38.3% of germination while in bold seeds it was 32.5% and 32.1%, respectively. Results were found to be significant at all levels of pretreatment at all the temperatures. Germination index (GI) and germination speed (GS) were found to be significant and were maximum in small seeds as compared to bold seeds and again 30°C had exhibited more GI and GS. The data for protein content of seeds of C. paniculatus before the start of germination study was found to be 0.911 mg/g. The results revealed that the acid treatments enhanced the germination of Jyotishmati seeds exhibiting dormancy. Thus it could be concluded that there was stimulatory effect of pretreatments on germination and seedling vigour of the test crop studied and could be tried in future as potential laboratory testing procedure for quick addressing germination of the seeds.