Hormone priming improves germination characteristics and enzyme activity of sorghum seeds (Sorghum bicolor L.) under accelerated aging

Abstract

Maximum germination percentage achieves immediately after harvesting and gradually decreases with storage time. Aging is one of the key factors in plant yield loss especially in vegetables. Seed aging is the main problem of seed storage. Application of accelerated aging treatment is used to assess seed vigor and quality. Seed priming enhances seed germination performance after aging. An experiment was conduct in order to investigate the activity of catalase and ascorbate peroxidase during accelerated aging and repair during priming treatment of sorghum seeds. In order to improve germination characteristics in aged seeds with seed priming. Our result showed that seed priming treatments significantly (p≤ 0.01) affected, germination percentage, germination index and means time to germination after aging (0, 3 and 6 days). Increasing aging duration resulted higher reduction in germination characteristics. Priming with gibberelic acid (GA), salicylic acid (SA) and ascorbic acid (ASC) increased germination characteristics of seed aged. The highest germination percentage, germination index, normal seedling percentage and enzyme activity were achieved in control conditions (0 day of aging). Antioxidant activity of aged seeds increased after seed priming.