Hydro-Priming and Hydration-Dehydration Treatment Improve Seed Invigoration and Biotic Stress Tolerance

Resumo

Weed infestation and biotic stresses often deteriorate seed quality and viability of crops by several mechanisms. The objective of the present study is to assess the methodology to increase seed viability by two consecutive hydration and dehydration treatments of hydro-primed crop seeds under biotic stresses. The effect of treatments was assessed in Solanum melongena L. as target crop and Amaranthus spinosus L. and A. viridae L. as weed species used as stress agent. The physiological parameters like germination percentage, seed viability, and vigor of target crop were increased by a factor of twice to thrice while T₅₀ values were reduced after treatments with the association of weed plants. While the biochemical parameters like leaching of soluble carbohydrates, proteins, amino acids, and electrolytes were reduced after treatments compared to the untreated one. The proline content was also increased in the treated seed samples. The activity of amylase was decreased while dehydrogenase was increased after treatments. Thus the hydro-priming and hydration-dehydration treatments had improved seed health and lesser weed seed viability. Therefore, hydro-priming-hydration-dehydration treatment of target crop plants might be helpful to increase crop yield and also to reduce the stress effects due to biotic stress factors in the agricultural fields.