Influence of Seed Priming with Nano Iron Oxide on Germination and Seedling Growth of Mungbean

Abstract

Mungbean is one of the important grain legumes and considered as ‘Green Pearl’ due to its nutritional significance. It is an excellent source of proteins and micronutrients and readily accessible to low income groups in arid and semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia. However, poor nutritional status of the soils in these regions limits the productivity and grain nutritional properties of mungbean. Seed priming with nutrient solutions was identified as viable and cost effective alternative to increase the crop productivity and grain nutritional properties and hence, an in-vitro experiment was conducted for optimizing the concentration of nano iron oxide (FeO) for seed priming in mungbean at Agricultural College, Bapatla, Acharya N.G.Ranga Agricultural University, Andhra Pradesh during 2018. Different concentrations of nano iron oxide were tested in completely randomized block design with three replications. The results revealed that, the nano iron oxide 50 ppm was found effective in increasing the germination percent, shoot length, root length, seedling vigour index and speed of germination of mungbean and has been considered as an optimum concentration for seed priming in mungbean.