EFFECT OF BOTANICALS SEED PRIMING ON YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS OF MALT BARLEY (Hordeum vulgare L.)

Abstract

Application of seed dressing synthetic compounds for enhancing yield and yield components of crops is becoming very expensive for resource poor farmers beside its negative effect on the natural environment. Thus, the current field and laboratory experiment was conducted during the 2018 main cropping season for testing the potential of locally available plant extracts; garlic (Allium sativum), ginger (Zingiber officinale), neem seed (Azadracta indica), varnonia leaf (Vernonia amygdalina) and crouton leaf (Crouton macrostachya)  as seed priming materials on malt barley. Three levels of each priming material (5%, 10% and 15 % concentration) were prepared and full sized malt barley seeds were soaked for 12hrs in these priming materials. Seed dressing chemical (Dynamic 400 FS), distilled water soaked seeds, and dry seeds were used as a control for the field experiment. Primed seeds with all concentrations of botanicals, including distilled water and dynamic dressing chemical had a significant enhancing effect on agronomic parameters of malt barley under both laboratory and field conditions except for the effect of ginger extract priming which negatively affected the agronomic parameters as compared to dry planted (untreated) seeds. However, there was clear variation among botanical extracts and this is depending on their concentration and types of used botanicals. Among the tested botanicals, all three levels of garlic extracts have a significant enhancing effect on all agronomic parameters and this was followed by the neem. From the result of this study, seed priming with naturally available plant materials were found to improve yield and yield components of malt barley where for this particular experiment, all levels of garlic performed best as compared to other priming materials.