Seed germination in response to osmosic stress

An Attempt was carried out to evaluate seed germination performances of Baraka, Adlib and Nineveh lentil cultivars besides Local Vetch and Local Mungbean cultivar under (0, -0.5, -1 and -1.5 Mpa) osmotic potentials created by dissolving pure NaCl in distilled water. Gradual reductions in osmotic solutions resulted in gradual reduction in all detected parameters. Subsequently, -1.5Mpa revealed the highest reductions in terms of final germination percentage (467.1%), germination rate (1710%), radical length (12829.4%) and Plumule length ( infinity). It also aggravated the adverse effects by increasing the duration required for attaining the peak germination percentage (110.8%), as compared to that of distilled water. Treatments were categorized according to their adverse influence on performance of seed germinations as following: -1.5 Mpa> -1 Mpa> -0.5 Mpa> 0 Mpa. Mungbeans local cultivar seeds revealed the best germination performance, as compared to other pulse crops and their cultivars. Since this cultivar gave the highest germination rate (60.5 seedling.d-1), plumule length (33 mm). In addition to that it significantly reduced days required for peak germination (2.6) and days to emergence commencements (1.3). Therefore, cultivars can be grouped according to their positively performance as below: Mungbean> Adlib>Nineveh> Baraka> Common Vetch. Mungbeans seeds appeared to be the most potent under all tested osmotic potentials. This cultivar manifested the highest plumule lengths under distilled water (108 mm), -0.5 Mpa (21mm) and -1.5 Mpa (3mm). Moreover this cultivar exhibited, days required for first emergence at all osmotic potentials.