Substrate effect and different pre-germinative treatments on seed germination of Tento – Ormosia paraensis Ducke (Fabaceae)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of pre-germinative treatments in different substrates for dormancy-break of Ormosia paraensis Ducke seeds. Four pre-germinative treatments were evaluated: 1) mechanical scarification, 2) mechanical scarification and water soaking, 3) heat shock, and 4) control. The seeds treated were planted in different substrates: sand, sawdust, and forest soil. In each substrate, three replicas of 50 seeds for each pre-germinative treatment (total of 1,800 seeds) were used. To assess possible differences and interaction between the pre-germinative treatments and the substrates a factorial ANOVA was used. Furthermore, the Tukey test (p0.05). The treatments with higher germination rates were mechanical scarification (28.4%) and mechanical scarification with water soaking (36.4%), which did not differ from each other, but they were different from the heat shock (0.02%) and control (2%) (p<0.05) treatments. The scarification treatments increased germination by 15 times and decreased the mean germination time (MGT) in more than 30 days when compared to control, indicating that mechanical scarification is a feasible method for dormancy-break of O. paraensis seeds.

Keywords

• Dormancy-break
• Forest nurseries
• Mechanical scarification
• Reforestation