Effect of seed priming on germination, emergence and seedling growth of spring rice (Oryza sativa L.) cv. Hardinath-1

The study was conducted from December 2017 to May 2018 to depict reliable and effective technique of seed priming in spring rice variety. The laboratory analysis was performed in the Regional Seed Testing Laboratory, Sundarpur, Kanchanpur under controlled conditions. The completely randomized design with 6 treatments- without priming, water/ hydro-priming, 2% urea priming, 2% DAP priming, 2% MOP priming and 2% ZnSO4 priming with 4 replications was used. Two different experimental setups were made for germination and emergence test using germination paper roll and sand tray method. Meanwhile, the parameters like germination percentage, germination energy, vigor index, root length and shoot length at 7 DAS and emergence percentage were remarkably affected. However, the parameters like the speed of germination and shoot length, fresh weight and dry weight at 10th, 15th and 20th DAS were not affected significantly by the priming treatments. The priming treatment with 2% MOP solution gave the best results for germination percentage (93.5%), germination energy (92.5%), vigor index (138.1) and emergence percentage (93.0%). 2% urea priming treatment resulted in longest root length (12.04 cm) and shoot length (7.97 cm) at 7 DAS. This study suggests seed priming with 2% MOP solution as an easy and effective technique for improving the germination, emergence and seedling parameters of spring rice, variety Hardinath-1.