Effect of Seed Priming on Plant Growth and Bulb Yield in Onion (Allium cepa L.)

Seed priming is one of the pre-sowing seed management techniques where the seeds are partially soaked and subsequently dried back for invigorative effect that expresses on field emergence and extend up to yield. A field experiment was carried out to study the effect of different priming treatments on growth and bulb yield of onion during Rabi season. Seed of fresh and aged seed lots of onion cv. Agrifound Dark Red were subjected to hydro priming with distilled water for 24 hrs (T1), halo priming with 3% KNO3 for 12hrs (T2), osmo priming with PEG 6000 (-1.0 MPa) for 24 hrs (T3), sand matric priming with 80% WHC for 24 hrs (T4), GA3 priming @100ppm for 6 hrs (T5) and control (T6). Significant variation recorded in fresh and aged seed lots and also among the seed priming treatments with respect to the growth and yield characters studied viz., field emergence percentage, plant height, number of leaves at 45, 75 and 95 DAT, equatorial bulb diameter, bulb height, average bulb weight and total bulb yield. It was observed that seed priming with GA3 @100ppm for 6 hrs has showed better effect in improving all the growth and bulb characters studied in both the fresh and aged seed lots over the control.