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Pak. J. Bot., 45(3): 773-777, 2013.

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EFFECT OF VARIOUS SOURCES AND DURATIONS OF PRIMING ON SPINACH SEEDS

ARSHAD ALAM¹, NOOR UL AMIN^1*, NEELAM ARA¹, MURAD Ali² AND IMRAN ALI³

Abstract: The present investigation was undertaken to evaluate the effect of priming on spinach with various sources and soaking durations at the Department of Horticulture, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Agricultural University Peshawar during 2008-09. The experiment was laid down in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. Four priming sources (Distilled water, DAP, SSP, SSP+Na₂CO₃) and soaking durations of 4h interval (4h to 24h) along with control were studied. Number of days to emergence, germination percentage, survival percentage, leaf area (cm²), leaf yield (tons ha^-1) and 100 number seeds weight (g) were significantly affected by priming sources and durations. Mean values showed that early emergence (5.952 days), maximum germination percentage (88.14), survival percentage (89.96), plant height (31.24 cm), leaf area (63.12 cm²), leaf yield (14.667 tons ha^-1) and 100 seed weight (1.00 g) were observed in plots in which seeds were soaked in SSP+Na₂CO₃ solution.  In case of soaking durations, early emergence (5.917 days), maximum germination percentage (89.42), survival percentage (90.40), plant height (31.16 cm), leaf area (60.72 cm²), leaf yield (14.340 tons ha^-1) and 100 seed weight (0.966 g) were recorded in the plots in which seeds were soaked for 24h. Mean values of interactions results showed that early emergence (5.0 days), maximum germination percentage (95.33), survival percentage (95.38), plant height (33.70 cm), leaf area (70.78 cm²), leaf yield  (16.257 tons ha^-1) were observed in plots where seed were soaked in SSP+Na₂CO₃ solution for 24h.  Overall SSP+Na₂CO₃ solution proved the best in most of the parameters while distilled water (control) showed comparatively poor performance.

¹Department of Horticulture, The  Agricultural University Peshawar, Pakistan

²Social Science Research Institute, NARC, Islamabad, ³Agricultural Research Institute Tarnab, Peshawar

^*Corresponding author e-mail: drnoorulamin@yahoo.com