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Journal of Energy Bioscience
2013, Vol.4, No.1, 1-6 http://jeb.sophiapublisher.com
Research Report
Open Access
Influence of Seed Fortification Treatment with Inorganic Nutrients in
Jatropha
Curcas
(L.)
Natarajan Mariappan
2
, P. Srimathi
1
, L. Sundaramoorthy
2
, K. Sudhakar
3
1. Department of Seed science and Technology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India-641 003
2. Vanavarayar Institute of Agriculture, Manakkadavu, Pollachi, India-642 103
3. Department of seed science and Technology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India-641 003
Corresponding Author email: mariappann21@gmail.com;
Author
Journal of Energy Bioscience, 2013, Vol.4, No.1 doi: 10.5376/jeb.2013.04.0001
Copyright
© 2013 Mariappan et al. This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Studies were conducted to evaluate the influence of seed fortification treatment with growth stimulants of inorganic
nutrients viz., thiourea, KNO
3
, K
2
SO
4
, KH
2
PO
4
, Na
2
HPO
4
, ZnSO
4
, FeSO
4
, MgSO
4
, MnSO
4
and NaCl prepared in two concentrations
viz., 0.5% and 1%. The seeds were removed at 16 h soaking duration and were sown in sand media under germination room
condition (25
℃
, 95 ± 2% RH) and raised bed nursery along with water soaked and control seeds. The results revealed that among the
inorganic nutrients K
2
SO
4
at 0.5% concentration had better seed invigourative effect, which recorded 44% and 55% than control in
both controlled germination room and nursery bed respectively. However, shoot length, dry weight and fresh weight expressed a
significant influence on seedling quality characters with the fortified seeds.
Keywords
Seed invigouration; Inorganic nutrients; Nursery; Seedling production
Introduction
Researchers (Hatano and Asakawa, 1964; Khan, 1977;
Nagao and Furutani, 1986; Bhattacharya, 1991 and
Supari et al., 1993) with decades of their
understanding emphasized the need for exogenous
application of growth stimulants for improving the
germination and vigour status of seeds (Kumaran et al.,
1993) as the growth and development of plants are
under the control of endogenous level of growth
regulating substances within the seed (Pandey and
Sinha, 1995). Researchers recommend various growth
regulators, inorganic and organic nutrients to
invigourate the seeds of agricultural, which vary with
their responses, depending on species and the initial
quality of the seed lot. In the present study, evaluation
were made on
Jatropha curcas
, the emerging biodiesel
crop of the future on standardization of a cost
effective pre-sowing seed treatment for production of
quality seedling at nursery.
1 Result and Discussion
Nutrients are the other alternatives to growth
regulators as they are cost effective and the lethality
rate will be lesser at supra optimal conditions. In
addition they are also easily available than the growth
regulator. The study was formulated to fortify the
seeds with micro and macro nutrients in the form of
different compounds in two different concentrations of
0.5% and 1% with the soaking durations of 16 h
adopting the seed to solution ratio of 1:1 revealed that
among the nutrients, seeds fortified with 1% K
2
SO
4
enhanced the seed and seedling quality characters at
controlled room condition (Table 1) and it was
followed by 0.5% KH
2
PO
4
. The hike due to the
soaking treatment with 0.5% K
2
SO
4
for 16 h was
observed to be 44%, 32.8%, 15.3%, 25% and 54.9%
over control seeds, respectively for seedling percent,
root length, shoot length, dry matter production and
vigour index.
Jouranal of Energy Bioscience
Preferred citation for this article:
Mariappan et al., 2013, Influence of Seed Fortification Treatment with Inorganic Nutrients in
Jatropha Curcas
(L.), Journal of Energy Bioscience, Vol.4,
No.1 1-6 (doi: 10.5376/jeb.2013.04.0001)
Received: 23 Jul., 2013
|
Accepted: 31 Jul., 2013
|
Published: 24 Sep., 2013