Effect of Seed Priming on Grain Yield and Some Shoot and Root orphophysiological Characteristics of Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in Potted Planting Conditions in Farm

Seed priming is a relatively new, inexpensive, and straightforward technique to improve germination percentage, germination rate, early seedling establishment, and other plant's morphophysiological characteristics under normal and stress conditions. The main objective of this study was to investigate the effect of different seed priming treatments on some morphophysiological characteristics of three bread wheat cultivars in potted planting conditions on the farm.

In this study, three bread wheat cultivars (including "Rijaw," "Sardari," and "Karim") and 11 seed priming treatments (including hormonal priming, osmo-priming, nutritional priming, and hydro-priming with distilled water) and one untreated control treatment were investigated using an experiment conducted as factorial based on Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replicates at Mahidasht Agricultural Research Station, Kermanshah (AREEO) during 2016-2017 cropping seasons.

Cultivar and different seed priming treatments were significant on all the studied traits at a 1% probability level. "Karim" cultivar had the highest leaf relative water content (79.58%), flag leaf area (15.19 cm2), root volume (30.9 cm3), root dry weight (4.6 g/tube), shoot dry weight (26.7 g/tube) and root/shoot ratio (0.17) compared to the other cultivars. "Sardari" cultivar was superior to other cultivars regarding the plant height (98.4 cm) and root length (118 cm). "Rijaw" cultivar with plant height, root length, and flag leaf area equal to 84.4 cm, 113.7 cm, and 13.53 cm2 was identified as a suitable cultivar for dryland conditions which can be recommended along with "Sardari" as drought stress-tolerant cultivars. "Rijaw" cultivar had the highest chlorophyll index (46.3). The highest leaf relative water content, plant height, flag leaf area, and chlorophyll index belonged to nutritional treatments of urea with 4g/L (81.51%, 89.9 cm, 16.84 cm2, and 47) and zinc sulfate with 0.3% concentration (80.75%, 88.8 cm, 16.13 cm2 and 46), respectively.

The cultivar "Karim" had the highest values of the all shoot and root measured traits. In the current study, seed priming treatments of urea with 4 g/L concentration and zinc sulfate with 0.3% concentration were identified as suitable and superior seed priming treatments in wheat for dryland conditions. It is suggested that appropriate and ideal treatments obtained from the experiment and other bread and durum wheat varieties should be tested for further studies in different countries with similar climates.