Effects of priming with micronutrients on seed reserve mobilization of lentil at different temperatures

Crop yield in rain-fed regions is always affected by environment so that the instability of crop yield is considerably high in this condition. The study was carried out to evaluate effects of seed priming with Cu I, Zn II, K I, ZnSo4 on germination traits and seedling establishment at two temperatures of (10 °C and 20 °C). Results showed that seed priming influenced germination rate significantly and the primed seeds revealed higher germination rate than the unprimed seeds. The higher value was obtained by ZnSo4 treatment. However, germination percentage was not affected by priming treatments even though the priming slightly improved the value in comparison to control. Results also showed that the response of primed seeds to the low temperature was higher than in the high temperature. Remobilization of seed reserves was enhanced under priming treatments and the percentage of reserves depletion, conversion efficiency and total mobilized reserves were increased by seed treatments. It was concluded that not only the used compounds (particularly ZnSo4) can improve lentil establishment at early stages but also the compounds could be useful at bio-fortification programs at later stages.