Effect of Seed Priming on Growth and Yield of Hybrid Maize-Lathyrus Sequence under Rainfed Situation

Seed priming is a low-cost technology and effective way of improving nutrient supply to crops as well as the importance of priming to get a good crop stand of maize. Pre-sowing soaking of seeds with KH2PO4, Na2HPO4 etc. or simple water was earlier reported to improve seed germination, seedling vigor and root growth early in the season, resulting in good establishment, better drought tolerance and more yields of crop plants. In this context a field was conducted at Central Research Farm (CRF), Gayeshpur of BCKV, Nadia Under New alluvial zone of West Bengal during kharif season of 2016 and 2017 and rabi season of 2016-17 and 2017-18. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with nine (9) different treatments of seed priming methods. Seed priming with ZnSO4 @ 0.5% for 12 hrs could be recommended due to higher germination percentage (93.6%), number of leaves per plant (9.6), highest plant height (258.2 cm) at 60 DAS, maximum value of crop growth rate (26.6 g/m2/day) at 46-60 DAS of hybrid maize and highest plant height (19.5 cm & 42.8 cm at 30 & 60 DAS, respectively), highest value of dry matter accumulation (198.4 g/m2 at 60 DAS), maximum value of crop growth rate (4.87 g/m2/day) at 31-60 DAS for lathyrus. On the basis of pooled values of 2 years of experimentation, seed priming with ZnSO4 @ 0.5% for 12 hrs could be recommended due to higher yield (7.94 t ha-1 of kharif hybrid maize and 1682 kg ha-1 of lathyrus).