Abstract
Poor quality seeds of chickpea have germination problem and issue is serious in chickpea growing
areas where quality seed is not available. This study was an attempt to solve the problem. Experiment
was done in Seed Technology Laboratory of Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture,
Faisalabad. Two chickpea cultivars viz. Kabli type cultivar Noor-91 and desi type cultivar Punjab-91
were treated with different temperatures of 40, 50 and 60 oC at 24, 48 and 72 hrs. Different thermal
hardening treatments significantly improved different germination related traits including germination
percentage, germination index, germination energy and reduced time taken for 50% germination.
Similarly heating of chickpea seeds resulted in more number of secondary roots, and improved fresh
and dry weights. Although germination was improved with thermal treatments at 40 and 50 oC for
different time durations, however, an increased temperature (60 oC) was better only at 24 hrs and
keeping seeds at this temperature for more time resulted in reduced germination and other traits. It is
thus concluded that thermal hardening at 40 and 50 oC for up to 72 hrs can be used to improve
germination of chickpea.
Atique ur Rehman, Muhammad Farooq, Hakoomat Ali, Naeem Sarwar, Rafi Qamar. (2014) THERMAL HARDENING IMPROVES GERMINATION AND EARLY SEEDLING GROWTH OF CHICKPEA, Asian Journal of Agriculture and Biology, Volume 2, Issue 1.
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