Seed Quality Enhancement through Seed Priming Techniques in Medicinal Plants: A Review

Abstract

Medicinal plants are nature’s priceless gift to this world. The day to day demand for plant based natural raw materials for pharmaceuticals is increasing tremendously. Today’s health care systems rely largely on plant based material. Most of the world’s population depends on traditional medicine to meet their daily health requirements especially in the developing countries, where plants are the main source of medicine. Medicinal plants are considered as sources of raw material for pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. Often seeds of medicinal plants are dormant in nature and possess lesser germination potential, hence express difficulty in seed germination and their seedling establishment in the field. A simple way to improve seed germination and seedling establishment and consequently field performance of medicinal plants is adoption of presowing sowing seed treatment that are expressed differently as priming, fortification and soaking and drying. During wet treatment, seeds are partially hydrated, so that pre-germinative metabolic activities proceed, but the radicle protrusion is prevented, by drying back to the original moisture content. Primed seeds are physiologically activated for enhanced germination and growth. Various pre-hydration priming treatments are assessed by researchers for invigorating the medicinal plants with higher expression of seed germination and seedling vigour. This review describes the influence of seed priming on seed and seedling quality characters of medicinal plants under favorable conditions.