Physiological potential of seed germination and seedling vigour of okra and parsley as influenced by seed priming treatments

The experiment was conducted at the division of Basic Sciences and Humanities, SKUAST-Kashmir to improve the germination potential and seedling vigour of parsley and okra seeds during the year 2017 and 2018. Current season’s seeds of parsley (curly type) and okra (Pusa sawani) were primed with distilled water, vermiwash (4, 6 and 8x), PEG600 (-0.5, -1.0 and -1.5MPa) and KH₂PO₄ (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5%) at 25±2°C. Hydropriming improved germination potential and seedling vigour attributes, in that 18 and 24 hours of priming were proved as the best priming durations for okra and parsley, respectively. Seed priming of okra with 6x vermiwash (vermi-priming) and 1.0% aqueous solution of KH₂PO₄ (nutri-priming) for 18 hours resulted in best GP (92.4 and 91.0), MGT (1.32 and 2.02) and SVI (3.87 and 3.69) while as seed priming with PEG-6000, -1.5MPa (osmo-priming) for 24 hours was proved as the best priming treatment with GP, MGT and SVI values of 88.1, 2.81 and 3.47, respectively. However, unlike okra, 8x vermi-priming and 1.0% nutri-priming for 24 hours were established as the best priming treatments in parsley with superior values of GP (82.5 and 73.7), MGT (5.9 and 8.0) and SVI (0.30 and 0.23), respectively. Osmo-priming (-1.5MPa) with PEG-6000 again took more priming duration (48 hours) than other priming treatments to produce significantly finer GP (77.8), MGT (7.0) and SVI (0.24). Overall, 8x and 6x vermi-priming for 18 and 24 hours duration were proved as the best treatment for seed enhancement in okra and parsley, respectively.