Effect of various pre-treatments for breaking the dormancy of Jatropha gossypifolia Linn.
Mudasir Qadir and Fatima Khan*
Govt College of Science and Commerce Benazeer, Bhopal-462008 (India)
ABSTRACT
In the present investigation, seeds of Jatropha gossypifolia were subjected to various treatments to achieve early germination by breaking dormancy. The highest germination percentage was recorded for the seeds subjected to hot water pretreatment followed by IAA treatment which respectively induced 84 and 78 percent germination on 17th day after sowing. For the same time period, the germination percentage was 21, 38, 20, 58, 33, 32, 30, 24, 32, 60, 27, 49, 30 and 69 respectively in the seeds kept as control, those treated with scarification, stratification, alternating high and low temperature, KNO3, thiourea, kinetin, GA3, H2SO4, presoaking, electric current, mechanical injury, coumarin and brassinolide. Incidently, there was no improvement of germination percentage after 17th day of sowing. Thus, the best option for the germination of J. gossypifolia seeds is pre-treatment with hot water.