Impact of Seed Priming and Seed Rate on Productivity and Economic Profitability of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

In order to achieve optimal plant growth, the lifecycle of plants encounters various critical stage such as uneven seed germination, induce early flowering, poor and early seedling growth, poor root establishment which ultimately results in low crop yield. Keeping in view of the hypothesis of seed priming improves seedling emergence, reduces seedling emergence time, reduces seed dormancy, expands root growth, enhances nutrient uptake, resulted in better yield and yield contributing characters of plants, a field experiment was planned during Rabi season to figure out the effect of seed priming and seed rate on the yield performance of wheat. The experiment was laid out in factorial randomized block design which replicated thrice. The treatments included four seed priming methods (P1: no seed priming, P2: water seed priming, P3: 1% KNO3 seed priming, P4: 1% CaCl2 seed priming) and three seed rates (S1: 100 kg ha-1, S2: 125 kg ha-1, S3: 150 kg ha-1) using the wheat variety HD-2967. The result revealed that the yield and yield attributes of wheat were significantly influenced by the priming techniques. Seed priming with 1% CaCl2 solution increased grain yield (3977 kg ha-1), number of ear head (275.61 m-²), length of ear head (11.29 cm), number of grains per ear head (46.17) and test weight (41.11 g) and was found to be statistically at par with seed priming with 1% KNO3, but significantly superior over seed priming with water and dry seeding. Different seed rate significantly influenced grain and straw yield and yield contributing characters of wheat. The higher grain yield (3959 kg ha-1), straw yield (5095 kg ha-1) and no. of ear head (287.83) was obtained with the seed rate@150 kg/ha followed by 125 and 100 kg ha-1 of seed rate.