Effect of seed priming on fodder quantity and quality in fodder maize (Zea mays L.)

Introduction

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the most versatile crop with wider adaptability suitable for growing under varied agro-climatic zones. Maize consumption can be broadly divided in to three categories viz., food, fodder and industrial purposes. Maize crop as a fodder is an excellent option owing to its high palatable biomass potential and fast-growing nature. Maize fodder has a high nutritional value which aids in increasing the body weight and milk quality of livestock. Due to its high protein content, nutritional value and high palatability maize has a demand for potential export opportunities. African tall variety is a popular fodder maize variety used for making best quality silage in dairy industry. It is a short duration variety and yields high amounts of best quality green forage (30.9 tha -1 ). African Tall Maize is a composite and possess a number of seed quality problems like fast seed deterioration, low germination, poor stand establishment, low seedling vigour etc. Seed invigoration refers to those seed treatments which are either chemical, physical or physiological, those help in accelerating the germination, increasing the seedling vigour and improving the field stand. Seed priming is a pre-sowing partial hydration of seeds which is often used to improve crop performance. The different priming techniques are hydropriming, halopriming, osmopriming, hormonal priming etc. has proved to address the seed related issues in many crops. Keeping the above points in view the present investigation was carried out at Seed Research and Technology Centre during Rabi, 2022-23 to understand the effects of different priming techniques on fodder yield and quality in African tall variety of fodder maize.

Materials and Methods

Our study was aimed to evaluate the effect of seed invigoration on seed quality and fodder yield in maize (Zea mays L.). The laboratory and field experiments were conducted out during Rabi, 2022-23 at the Department of Seed Science and Technology, Seed Research and Technology Centre, College of Agriculture, PJTSAU, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Telangana. We obtained the pure freshly harvested seeds of fodder maize cv African tall from AICRP, Forage Crops, PJTSAU, Hyderabad. The initial seed quality attributes are 98% germination, 35.73 g test weight and 12% seed moisture content. We have treated the seeds viz., Soaking in water for 12 hours (T 1 ), Soaking in NaCl @ 4 g/litre of water for 8 hours (T 2 ), Soaking in Polyethylene Glycol solution @ 10 g/litre of water for 8 hours (T 3 ), Soaking in GA 3 @ 0.2 g/litre of water for 8 hours (T 4 ) along with untreated control (T 5 ).

After the soaking for specific period, seeds were removed from the solution and dried near to original seed moisture content with forced air at room temperature, and seeds were stored in cloth bags. The laboratory experiment was laid out in a factorial completely randomized design (RBD) with two factors i.e., months and treatments with 5 different seed priming treatments i.e., T 1 , T 2 , T 3 , T 4 and T 5 in 4 replications. The treated seeds are tested for seed quality parameters viz., seed germination (%) (ISTA 2019), root length (cm), shoot length (cm), seedling dry weight (g), seedling vigour index I & II (Abdul Baki and Anderson, 1973) [1] , field emergence (%) speed of germination (Maguire, 1962) [7] etc. The observations were taken on monthly basis for 5 months after seed treatments by following standard procedures. [9] while the field data was analyzed by following Randomized Block Design (RBD) by following (Gomez and Gomez, 1984) [6] . The significance of mean sum of squares for each parameter was tested against the corresponding error degrees of freedom using 'F' test (Fisher and Yates, 1963) [5] . Later, the least significant difference and critical difference at 5 per cent probability level were calculated wherever F test was significant and was used to compare treatment means.

Results and Discussion

The effect of seed treatments on field performance of fodder maize is as shown in the table no 1. Our observations on germination were validated with that of field emergence percentage as it gives true reflection of seed's ability to germinate under field conditions and to overcome various impediments. Field emergence gives accurate and reproducible results in predicting the planting value under field conditions. We recorded a highest field emergence (91%) with T 4 (seeds primed with GA 3 @ 0.2 g/litre of water for 8 hours) followed by 86% in case of T 3 i.e., osmopriming with PEG while a lowest field emergence (77%) was observed in control (T 5 ). Our results are in conformity with the findings of Bassi (2005) [13] i.e., gibberellic acid treatment of wheat seeds improved germination and field emergence and also with that of Yogananda et al. (2004) [12] who reported that bitter gourd seeds primed with 100 ppm GA3 for 24 hours gave better germination, field emergence, speed of emergence, seedling length and vigour index-I over the control.

Regarding the days to silking, our observations depicted that the seeds primed with phytohormone GA 3 came to flowering early by 2 days i.e., by 68 days as compared to hydropriming and control (70 days). It may be conferred that favourable climatic conditions during crop growth besides priming with phytohormone had a positive effect on early vegetative growth and flowering behaviour. Our findings were in line with that of Murungu et al. (2004)'s [8] findings in cotton and maize.

Our observations on field crop stand of maize seeds treated with various priming treatments depicted that T 4 showed the highest crop stand establishment (72%) followed by T 3 (69%). Incidentally, Tiwari et al. (2018) [11] also reported in pigeon pea that priming with GA 3 (100 ppm) for 12 hours has improved germination, speed of germination, seedling growth/stand establishment, and germination enzyme activity. Similar results were also observed pertaining to green fodder yield per plot at 90DAS, a significantly higher green fodder yield was recorded in case of T 4 (56.84 kg/plot) followed by T 3 (50.01 kg/plot) and a lowest as observed in control (41.56 kg/plot). Our observations imply that the taller plants coupled with more number of leaves and higher dry matter production resulted in significantly higher green fodder yield in case of T 4 . Our results are in conformity with that of wheat seeds soaked in GA 3 produced high fresh and dry matter yields (Radi et al. 2001) [10] .

In case of our findings in case of dry biomass yield (kg/plot) also showed that T 4 increases dry matter yield (30.61 kg/plot) followed by T 3 (27.72 kg/plot) and our findings are in line with that of Radi et al. (2001) [10] in wheat and Akter et al. (2014) [2] in maize.

Our observations on the number of cobs per plot depicts the highest number of cobs per plot 149 (T 4 ) and 130 (T 3 ) which indicates that different seed invigoration treatments significantly influenced the number of cobs per plot. Similar results were also reported by Akter et al. (2014) [2] experiment with gibberellic acid and cytokinins to counteract the negative effects of drought on maize. However, it was also reported that the relative yield advantages for the hormones were mainly attributed to improving the cob and seed-bearing capacity of droughtstressed maize plants.

Grain yield is the final outcome of the crop growth and that a maximum crude fibre (%) was observed in case of T 4 (26.35%) as compared to that of other treatments cumulative effect of growth and yield attributing characters. We observed a significant effect of seed invigoration treatment on the maize grain yield with a highest grain yield was recorded in T 4 (8.74 kg/plot) followed by T 3 (6.29 kg/plot). Incidentally, similar findings were reported by Aldesuquy and Ibrahim (2001) [3] that the impact of seawater salinity stress on wheat productivity appears to be lessened when seeds are treated with growth bioregulators like GA3. Our data on crude fibre (%) of maize leaves depicts i.e., T 1 (19.25%), T 2 (17.82%) T 3 (20.63%), and T 5 (15.71%). Similar findings were observed by Ali et al. (2016) on the effects of different seed priming techniques on emergence, growth and yield of forage maize (Zea mays L.). The results showed that CaCl 2 priming produced seeds with the highest crude protein contents, whereas KNO 3 priming produced seeds with the highest crude fibre and ash contents, which were 77, 40, and 62% higher than control, respectively.

Acknowledgement

AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank the Director of Research and Director (Seeds), Professor Jayashankar Telangana Agricultural University, Hyderabad for supporting this research.

References

1. Abdul Baki AA, Anderson JD. Vigour determination in soybean by multiple criteria. Crop Science. 1973;13:630-633.
2. Akter N, Rafiqul Islam M, Abdul Karim M, Hossain T. Alleviation of drought stress in maize by exogenous application of gibberellic acid and cytokinin. Journal of Crop Science and Biotechnology. 2014;17:41-48.
3. Aldesuquy HS, Ibrahim AH. Water relations, abscisic acid and yield of wheat plants in relation to the interactive effect of seawater and growth bioregulators. Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science. 2001;187(2):97-104.
4. Ali AA, Iqbal A, Iqbal MA. Forage maize (Zea mays L.) germination, growth and yield get triggered by different seed invigoration techniques. World Journal of Agricultural Sciences. 2016;12(2):97-104.
5. Fisher RA, Yates F. Statistical Tables for Biological, Agricultural and Medical Research. London: Oliver and Boyd Ltd.; 1963. p. 74-75.
6. Gomez KA, Gomez AA. Statistical Procedures for Agricultural Research. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons; 1984.
7. Maguire JD. Speed of germination aid in selection and evaluation for seedling emergence and vigour. Crop Science. 1962;2:176-177.
8. Murungu FS, Chiduza C, Nyamugafata P, Clark LJ, Whalley WR. Effect of on-farm seed priming on emergence, growth and yield of cotton and maize in a semi-arid area of Zimbabwe. Experimental Agriculture. 2004;40(1):23-36.
9. Panse UG, Sukhatme PV. Statistical Methods for Agricultural Workers. 2nd ed. New Delhi: ICAR Publication; 1985. p. 381.
10. Radi AF, Shaddad MAK, El-Enany AE, Omran FM. Interactive effects of plant hormones (GA3 or ABA) and salinity on growth and some metabolites of wheat seedlings. Plant Nutrition: Food Security and Sustainability of Agro-Ecosystems through Basic and Applied Research. 2001;436-437.
11. Tiwari TN, Upadhyay N, Prasad SR. Enhancement of seed quality through seed priming in pigeon pea. Journal of Food Legumes. 2018;31(2):88-92.
12. Yogananda DK, Vyakaranahal BS, Shekhargouda M. Effect of seed invigoration with growth regulators and micronutrients on germination and seedling vigour of bell pepper cv. California Wonder. Karnataka Journal of Agricultural Sciences. 2004;17(4):811-813.
13. Beales D, Biagini EF, Bassi ML. Il Risorgimento e l'unificazione dell'Italia. Il mulino; 2005.