Envelhecimento acelerado com soluções salinas para avaliação do vigor de sementes de feijão caupi

Abstract

The cowpea is one of the most adaptable, versatile and nutritious legume grown. The high quality of seeds is of great importance, especially as uniform germination. For this reason, high vigor seed are in basic and fundamental element of culture. There are several limitations to portray the performance of the batch field conditions when environmental conditions deviate from the most appropriate evaluation of force is needed to estimate the performance potential of the seeds. Therefore the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of seeds of two cultivars of cowpea after the aging test with saline solutions. The seeds were characterized for moisture content, germination, emergence rate index, thousand seed weight and first count. Each batch was subjected to 3 treatments with 4 replicates. The treatments consisted of distilled water, potassium chloride (KCl 32g / 100 mL distilled water) and sodium chloride (NaCl 40g / 100 mL water). 250 seeds were used, distributed in a single layer on a screen of aluminum, placed in plastic gerbox boxes (11 x11 x 3.5 cm) with 40 mL of each solution to yield 100 % UR in water, 87% of UR for KCl and 76 % UR for NaCl, seeds were exposed to temperatures of 41 and 42 °C, between 48 and 72 hours. After aging was carried water content of seeds and germination pattern. The data obtained from the characterization tests of the initial seed quality, and the data obtained for the accelerated aging test , were subjected to analysis of variance and means were compared by Tukey test at 5 % probability. The accelerated aging test with saline was efficient to assess the vigor of cowpea, indicating that lots of the 2010 harvest are more effective, probably due to the shorter storage time. When it was used with NaCl solution, cv. BRS Xiquexique harvested in 2009 had a higher percentage of normal seedlings (75 %).