Effect of Seed Priming on Some Germination Properties of Different Maize Cultivars

Abstract

An in vitro experiment was conducted during the year 2020 at the Seed Technology Laboratory of the Crop Department - College of AgriculturalEngineering Sciences.The experiment was carried out according to a completely randomized design with 4 replications. The first factor included three synthetic cultivars of maize (Al-Maha, Baghdad 3 and Al-Fajr), and AL-Nahrainhybrid. As for the second factor,it included the soaking of seeds with ASA, CK, GA3, KCL, H₂O₂, DW and DS.The seeds were soaked with solutions of these materials for 24 hours and five characteristics related to the germination process were studied, i.ethe percentage of standard laboratory germination (first count), laboratory germination percentage(final count), germination percentage in cold test and age acceleration test.The results of the experiment showed that the treatment of seed stimulation with H₂O₂ was significantly superior to the highest percentage of standard laboratory germination in the first count (94.67%), the percentage of final standard laboratory germination (95.33%), the speed of germination (30.87% on day^-1) and the percentage of germination in the cold test (84.42%). The percentage of germination in the age acceleration test was (84.25%).As for the cultivars, Baghdad cultivar was significantly superior with the highest standard laboratory germination percentage in the first count (88.48%) and the speed of germination (29.19%), while Al-Maha cultivar was significantly superior to with the highest standard laboratory germination percentage in the first count (95.71%), while AL-Nahrain cultivar was significantly superior With the highest germination percentage in the cold test (88.48%) and the germination rate in the accelerated ageing test (84.10%). The interaction between the two factors of this study was significant in all the studied traits.