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Effect of Pre-germination Technique on Enhancing Seed and Seedling Vigour in Ridge gourd (LuffaacutanglaRoxb.)

Sowing pre-germinated seeds has proved to be an effective technique to obtain early emergence, optimum field stand and high germination percentage. Before sowing, the pre-germination method could be used to separate dead seed and as dead low vigor seeds to get high vigor seeds, which can be taken for sowing. With this notion, an experiment was conducted with ridge gourd seed var. PKM 1 with two factors, one as soaking duration (6, 9, 12, 16, 20, and 24 h) and other as the incubation periods (1, 2, 3 and 4 days). Seeds were soaked in distilled water for the above-mentioned different durations in a 1:1 ratio on a volume basis. After a specified period of soaking, the seeds were placed in between the moist gunny bags and kept for incubation under dark conditions. Data were collected for different parameters viz., sprouting percentage, germination percentage, root length, shoot length, dry matter production and vigor index I & II and analyzed. Results obtained from the study showed that there is a significant difference between the treatments and seeds soaked in water for 20h with one-day incubation recorded the highest values in all the parameters. The seeds that were incubated without soaking performed similar to that of absolute control because of the presence of hard seed coat. Whereas, seeds that were soaked but not incubated had performed better than dry seed and only incubated seeds. This might be because, soaking seeds in water stimulates the pre-germinative metabolism, activates enzymes earlier and also releases the physical dormancy of ridge gourd seeds which makes the seed to germinate easier and faster. Hence, the study concluded that this technique might be considered as farmer’s friendly method that can be used to separate live seed in a seed lot, which will be useful for producing healthy seedlings, maintaining optimum plant population and uniformity in seedling emergence of ridge gourd.