THE influence of priming two cucumber cultivar seeds by wetting and drying cycles in distilled water, CaCO3, MgSO4 AND CaCO3+ MgSO4 solutions on growth and yield

Abstract EN

Seeds of Babylon and Khalifa cultivars were unprimed or primed by soaking them to extent of 100% of initial seed weights with distilled water, -1.5 Mpa CaCO3, -1.5 Mpa MgSO4, and a mixture -1.5 Mpa of CaCO3+ MgSO4, for 24 hrs then seeds were oven-dried to their initial weights under 55oC.

Priming was recycled 3 times.

Thereafter, seeds were sown directly in the field (direct cultivation) or sown in pots inside the plastic house then planted in the field (indirect cultivation).

The objective of this study was to find out the priming influence on growth and yield.

Results manifested that indirect cultivation yielded earlier and gave higher yield than direct one (23.3%, in 2004 and 1.2% in 2005).

The highest yield 11.2 kg.m-2 was confined to MgSO4 treatment in 2004, and 10.5 kg.m-2 in 2005 was accompanied by CaCO3+ MgSO4 treatment.

Babylon yielded earlier and exceeded Khalifa in total yield by (38.3% in 2004 and 14.5% in 2005).

Indirect Babylon cultivation showed the highest yields in 2004 (11.1 kg.m-2) and 2005 (9.8 kg.m-2).

Babylon primed by MgSO4 and CaCO3+ MgSO4 gave the highest yield (14.4 kg.m-2 in 2004 and 11.2 kg.m-2 in 2005, respectively).

The highest yield (11.8 kg.m-2) in 2005 was concomitant to indirect cultivation of Babylon primed by MgSO4+ CaCO3