Effects of sowing date and hydropriming on germination, lint yield, and seed oil of two cotton cultivars

This experiment was conducted to to evaluate effect of sowing date and seed hydropriming on, seed cotton yield, lint and seed oil of two cotton cultivars using a factorial experiment based on randomized complete block design in three replications at the Research Farm of Shahid University's Faculty of Agriculture in the spring of 2018. The first factor was sowing date with three levels: April 25, May 10 and May 25, the second factor was hydropriming in two levels of control (without priming) and hydro-priming application and the third factor was cultivar with two levels of May344 and Sajidi cultivars.the Results of this study showed that hydropriming had no effects on weight of single boll. The weight of bolls on the sowing date of May 25 compared to April 25 was higher in the condition without priming in both cultivars. But hydropriming increased seed yield. The highest seed yield was obtained with average 11.07 ton/ha in the primed seeds of May344 variety on April 25, which were more 26% increase compared to the non-priming treatment and compared to May 10 and May 25, respectively 9.7 and 28.8 percent. The comparison results of the average sowing date and priming showed that the planting date of 10 May had the highest percentage of seed oil. Highest percentage of oil with an average of 23.4% was observed on this sowing date and in without priming treatment.