Effect of Cold Plasma Treatment of Seeds on Quality of Seed Crop of Okra

Abstract

The effect of cold plasma treatment of seeds on quality of seed crop of okra [Abelmoschus esculentus (L.) cultivar P-8] was studied at Department of Seed Science and Technology, Dr Y.S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, Himachal Pradesh. The experiment comprising of seeds of two different age viz., ‘A1’ (One year old seed) and ‘A2’ (Two year old seed) and seven plasma treatments of seed viz., ‘P1’ (Only vaccum, no plasma treatment), ‘P2’ (3 minute), ‘P3’ (6 minute), ‘P4’ (9 minute), ‘P5’ (12 minute), ‘P6’ (15 minute) an ‘P7’ (Control without treatment). The seeds with different combination of treatments were evaluated for different quality parameters studied in laboratory. It was found that crop raised from one year old seeds resulted in higher germination percentage (92.39 %) in comparison with crop raised  from two year old seeds (86.29 %) and the seed treated with treatment ‘P5’ shows highest germination percentage i.e. 91.75 %. This may be due to higher thousand seed weight resulted in bolder seed and have sufficient food reserve, obtaining good quality fruits which resulted in higher germination percentage. Similarly other characters like speed of germination, seedling length, seedling dry weight, SVI-I and SVI-II were found to be maximum (40.48,26.90 cm, 23.06 mg, 2486.16 and 2138.61, respectively) in one year old seeds and minimum (35.09, 26.01 cm, 21.89 mg, 2244.96 and 1890.79, respectively) in two year old seed. The reduction in seed quality parameters could be attributed to different in one year and two year old seed is due to ageing. Whereas in all the plasma treatments ‘P5’ shows highest speed of germination, seedling length, seedling dry weight, SVI-I and SVI-II. These results indicated that cold plasma treatment might promote the growth and modify the speed of germination.