Effect of Seed Priming on Some Characteristic of Seedling and Seed Vigor of Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum)

In order to investigate the effect of seed priming on some characteristic of seedling and seed vigor of tomato cultivar: ZD 610, an experiment was conducted base on randomized complete design with four replications at the applied agricultural science education center of Shahrood (Iran) greenhouse during 2010. Traits such as fresh weight of seedling, root length, shoot length, mean germination time (MGT) and final germination percentage (FGP). Treatment included Distilled water (dH2O), sodium chloride (NaCl-2%), salicylic acid (SA-60 ppm), acetylsalicylic acid (ASA-60 ppm), ascorbic acid (AsA-60 ppm), PEG-6000 and potassium nitrate (KNO3-5%), in darkness for 48 hours. The results indicated that the effect of priming treatments was significant. KNO3 in all of traits was better than other priming. The lowest fresh weight of seedling was observed in control and then H2O and NaCl. The minimum of root and shoot length was observed in NaCl treatment. The KNO3 treatment as a superior treatment introducing this experiment.