Effects of Seed Priming and Sowing Date on Antioxidant Enzymes Activity and Yield of Chickpea Under Dryland Condition

In order to investigate the effects of seed priming and sowing dates on chickpea, an experiment was conducted in 2010 using a randomized complete block design as a split plot experiment. Sowing dates of winter and spring were allocated to main plots. priming treatments including control (non priming), hydropriming, priming with KCl and CaCl2 as osmopriming, ZnSO4 and Ascorbate as mineral priming were assigned to subplots. The results showed that grain yield was greatest under winter sowing. Grain yield reduction under spring sowing was mainly due to a reduction in the number of seed/plant and seed weight. Results indicated that osmopriming treatments had adverse affects on number of plants per unit area, shoot dry weight at flowering, grain yield and harvest index. Hydropriming, ascorbate and ZnSO4 priming increased grain yield under these tow sowing dates. Catalase and peroxidase showed higher antioxidant activities under spring sowing date than winter sowing. These differences were attributed to severe drought stress under spring sowing date. In overall it can be concluded that peroxidase showed 20 times higher antioxidant activity in contrast to catalase and played main defense role in reduction of oxidative damages in chickpea under drought stress.