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Research Article

Legume Research, volume 44 issue 7 (july 2021) : 811-817

Effect of Seed Hardening and Pelleting on Growth, Yield, Physiology and Resultant Seed Quality of Cowpea under Natural Saline Conditions

S. Maamallan1, M. Prakash1,*, S. Rameshkumar2, G. Sathiyanarayanan1
1Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar-608 002, Tamil Nadu, India.
2Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar-608 002, Tamil Nadu, India.

  • Submitted12-10-2019|

  • Accepted30-05-2020|

  • First Online 22-08-2020|

  • doi 10.18805/LR-4255

Cite article:- Maamallan S., Prakash M., Rameshkumar S., Sathiyanarayanan G. (2021). Effect of Seed Hardening and Pelleting on Growth, Yield, Physiology and Resultant Seed Quality of Cowpea under Natural Saline Conditions . Legume Research. 44(7): 811-817. doi: 10.18805/LR-4255.

ABSTRACT

Background: Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is one of the most important legume crops cultivated throughout the world. Cowpea is used as food, feed, forage, fodder, green manuring and vegetable. It’s seed is a nutritious component in the human diet, as well as for livestock. Seed hardening and pelleting are seed enhancement techniques used to improve seed germination and seedling vigour and growth by altering the physiological state of the seed. This alteration may improve the vigor or the physiology of the seed by enhancing uniformity of germination. Seed enhancement techniques like hardening and priming include use of chemicals that trigger systemic acquired resistance or improve stress tolerance whereas the pelleting treatments improve seed handling and planting. They also enhance nutrient availability or provide inoculates by delivering materials needed during sowing, germination and seedling establishment. Hence in order to study the combined effect of seed hardening and pelleting on growth, yield and resultant seed quality of cowpea under natural saline conditions, the present study was taken up.

Methods: The present field and laboratory investigations were carried out to study the effect of seed hardening, seed pelleting and their combined effect on growth, physiology, yield and resultant seed quality of cowpea under natural saline conditions. The fresh seeds of cowpea seeds cv. CO (CP) 7 were hardened with KCl @ 1%, CaCl2 @ 1% and both KCl and CaCl2 @ 1% and then the hardened seeds were further pelleted with pungam leaf powder @ 100, 150 and 200 g kg-1 of seed. Then the treated seeds were evaluated for their seed productivity and resultant seed qualities using untreated seeds as control. Observations on growth, leaf chlorophyll content, gas exchange parameters, yield and resultant seed quality parameters were recorded. 

Result: The experimental results revealed that among the treatments, seeds hardened with KCl @ 1 % + CaCl2 @ 1 % and pelleted with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g per kg recorded higher growth, yield parameters, leaf chlorophyll content, gas exchange parameters and resultant seed quality when compared to control and other treatments.

INTRODUCTION

Pulses are the most important crops in India, because of their low cost and quality protein that complements the protein in cereals.  They contain higher level of protein nearly three times as much as cereals and thus enhance the nutritional value of cereal dominated vegetarian diet. Among the pulses, cowpea [Vigna unguniculata (L.) Walp.] is an annual herbaceous legume from the genus Vigna, which has been originated in Africa (Smartt, 1990). Apart from the richness of protein in dried seeds, the whole plant of cowpea contains calcium (360 to 992.4 mg/kg), zinc (31.5 and 35.6 mg/kg) and iron (27.6 to 28.9 mg/kg) (Mamiro et al., 2011). Due to its tolerance to sandy soil and adoptability to low moisture requirement, it is grown as an important crop in the semi-arid regions across Africa and other countries. It requires very few inputs as the plants’ root nodules are able to fix atmospheric nitrogen, making it a valuable crop for resource poor farmers and is also well suited to intercropping with other crops.
       
The inclusion of cowpea in farming systems could foster the process of carbon sequestration by increasing soil carbon, thus building system resilience to adapt to and mitigate climate change (FAO, 2016). Cowpea being a low input crop, it has become vital farming system component in arable lands prone to stress caused by salinity and drought. Soil salinity is one of the major factors responsible for losses in agricultural production. Salt affected lands cover approximately 10% of the global land surface and nearly 50% of the irrigated cropland worldwide (Iseki et al., 2016). Seed germination, seedling emergence and their survival are very sensitive to salinity in soil. These adversities affect seed germination, seedling emergence and their survival at early stages of the crop. High levels of soil salinity can significantly inhibit seed germination and seedling growth, due to the combined effects of high osmotic potential and specific ion toxicity (Grieve and Suarez, 1997).

Seed hardening cum seed pelleting are the seed enhancement techniques, which can be used to improve germination and seedling growth at initial stages of crop. To increase the crop yield under drought and soil salinity, seed hardening and pelleting of seeds has been done which will give an initial boost for germinating seeds and growing seedlings. Hence seedlings can put forth better root and shoot growth and enhance the drought tolerance resulting in increasing yield (Opheliya, 2017). Further, seed hardening is one of the pre-sowing seed management practices recommended for dryland and saline agriculture to resist the seed against the adverse agro ecological conditions the seed faces at the time of sowing until seedling emergence. Hardening of seeds is also said to result in the absorption of more water due to increase in the elasticity of cell wall and development of a stronger and efficient root system (Krishnasamy and Srimathi, 2001). Further, it enhances seed vigour by protecting the structure of plasma membrane against injury during stress environment (Jun Min et al., 2000). The seed hardening treatments with PEG 8000, CaCl2, KCl, KH2PO4 and KNO3 resulted in reduction in membrane leakage and maximum invigoration for improving vigour, growth and yield of wheat, black gram and chickpea under drought stress (Amin et al., 2016; Bandana Bose et al., 2016; Prajapati, et al., 2017; Akshay et al., 2018).
       
Seed pelleting is the process of enclosing a seed with small quantity of inert material just large enough to produce globular unit of standard size to facilitate precision planting. The inherent material consists of either nutrients (organic or inorganic in nature) that creates natural water holding media to provide small amount of nutrients to young seedlings or plant protection agents that protect them from the pathogens at soil rhizosphere. It also reduces the problem of thinning, gap filling and chemicals required in low quantity (Chaya Devi, 2017). The cost involved in seed pelleting is also less and the benefit to the farmers especially who depends on monsoon showers is more. Seed pelleting with botanicals has gained importance nowadays due to their anti oxidant property and presence of various alkaloids like pinnalin, pongamol, saponin, b-sitosterol and tannins as in case of pungam leaf extract (Singh, 1982; Savita Sangwan et al., 2010). Use of leaf powders of pungam (Pongamia glabra), prosopis (Prosopis juliflora), notchi (Vitex negundo) and arappu (Albizia amara) as pelleting agents enhanced the seedling vigour and crop yield in many crops (Bhattacharya et al., 2015; Pushpakaran et al., 2018; Prakash et al., 2018).
       
Combination of hardening and pelleting techniques will offer resilience to the stress problems at seed germination stage and further during seedling establishment and initial root proliferation. Hence, in present study, seed hardening chemicals and botanical leaf powders as pelleting agents are used. The present investigation was undertaken with the objective to study the effect of seed hardening and pelleting on growth, yield, physiology and seed quality in cowpea under natural saline conditions.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The experiments were carried out as field trial during kharif season (June-August) 2018 by adopting Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications under natural saline condition at Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India.  The salinity level of the trial plot was with pH of 7.9 and EC of 3.9 dsm-1. Genetically pure seeds of cowpea cv. CO(CP)7(Vigna unguniculata) were obtained from Palur Research Station, (TNAU) for the study. A total of 9 treatments along with a control were taken for this study as per following treatments
 
T0- Control
T1- KCl @ 1% + Pungam leaf powder @ 100 g/kg
T2- KCl @ 1% + Pungam leaf powder @ 150 g/kg
T3- KCl @ 1% + Pungam leaf powder @ 200 g/kg
T4- CaCl2 @ 1% + Pungam leaf powder @ 100 g/kg
T5- CaCl2 @ 1% + Pungam leaf powder @ 150 g/kg
T6- CaCl2 @ 1% + Pungam leaf powder @ 200 g/kg
T7- KCl @ 1% + CaCl2 @ 1% + Pungam leaf powder @ 100 g/kg
T8- KCl @ 1% + CaCl2 @1% + Pungam leaf powder @ 150    g/kg
T9-  KCl @ 1% + CaCl2 @ 1% + Pungam leaf powder @200 g/kg.
 
       
As per the treatment schedule, cowpea seeds were hardened with KCl @ 1%, CaCl2 @ 1% and both KCl and CaCl2 @ 1% and further pelleted with leaf powders of pungam [Millettia pinnata (L.) Panigrahi] @ 100, 150 and 200 g kg-1 of seed. For seed pelleting, the dried pungam leaves were powdered and fine leaf powder was obtained by sieving through 0.10 mm wire mesh. Seeds were smeared with gum Arabic as adhesive and then seed pelleting material was coated on the seed uniformly in required proportion and the pelleted seeds were air dried before sowing. The treated seeds were sown in flat beds of 3m ´ 3m dimension. Recommended agronomic practices and need based plant protection measures were adopted. For recording biometric and yield parameters, ten plants were randomly selected from each plot and tagged. Leaf photosynthetic rate, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance and intercellular CO2 concentration were measured from two, uppermost fully expand leaves on intact plants in the field using LICOR-6400xT Portable Photosynthetic System (Lioncoln, USA). All these measurements were taken between 10.00-11.00 A.M. The chlorophyll content was also estimated as per the procedure of Yoshida et al., (1971).
       
The resultant seed quality characters viz., germination per cent, root length, shoot length, dry matter production and vigour index were also assessed from the harvested seeds by subjecting the seeds to germination studies at laboratory condition. The data collected were analysed statistically by adopting the technique described by Panse and Sukhatme (1985). The critical difference (CD) was worked out at 5 per cent (P=0.05) level.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Growth parameters
 
The present results revealed that seed hardening and pelleting treatments significantly influenced the growth attributes of cowpea. In general, seed hardening with both KCl and CaCl2 envisaged better results when compared to treatments with single chemical. Among the different doses of seed pelleting treatments, pungam leaf powder @ 200 g kg-1 was found superior when compared to lower doses. It was observed that seeds hardened with KCl@1% + CaCl2@ 1% and pelleted with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g kg-1 recorded higher growth parameters like plant height, number of branches plant-1, dry matter production plant-1 and lower days to first flowering and 50 percent flowering whereas, control recorded lower values for the above growth parameters (Table 1). Decline in plant height at control might probably be resulted from the decreased availability of soil water and increasing toxicity of Na+ and Cl- associated with salinity. The initial vigour of the hardened and pungam leaf powder invigourated seeds might have induced the seedling growth and enabled better nutrient absorption, thus encouraging quick growth and increased plant height with increased number of branches. The initial vigour of the pungam leaf powder invigorated seeds might have induced the seedling growth and enabled better nutrient absorption by the foliage, thus encouraging quick growth and increased all growth attributes including dry matter production (Dileep kumar et al., 2009). The increased number of branches and plant height could be attributed to the presence of ammoniacal nitrogen, phosphorous and other essential micronutrients in the pelleting combination. The improvement in field emergence could be attributed to activation of cells, which resulted in the enhancement of mitochondrial activity leading to the formation of high energy compounds and vital biomolecules needed during the early phase of germination (Ananthi et al., 2015).
 

Table 1: Effect of seed hardening and pelleting on growth and yield parameters of cowpea cv. CO (CP) 7 under natural saline condition.


       
Earliness in flowering observed in seeds hardened with KCl @1% + CaCl2 @ 1% and pelleted with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g kg-1 might be attributed to the early emergence and faster accumulation of dry matter. The present results are in line with the reports of Kamaraj and Padmavathi (2012) in green gram with 1% prosopis leaf extract treatment and Prakash et al., (2013) in paddy hardened with KCl@ 1%, followed by pelleting with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g/kg. The leaves of Millettia pinnata contain 1.16% nitrogen, 0.14% phosphorus and 0.49% potash and various alkaloids like pinnalin, pongamol, saponin and tannins (Singh, 1982). Saponins present in the pongamia leaf extract might have enhanced the nutrient absorption and also would have protected the seedlings against pathogens (Manisathiya and Muthuchelian, 2010). The pungam leaf powder pelleting might have triggered enhanced protein synthesis, which in turn could have contributed to the amino acid rescue and protein turnover during active metabolism, later in plant life (Prakash et al., 2018). 
       
In present experiment, seed hardening and pelleting improved growth attributes and thereby increased the gas exchange which ultimately improved the photosynthetic efficiency of the plants and dry matter production.
 
Physiological parameters
 
Chlorophyll is the most important compound as it is involved in photosynthate production (Mishra and Srivastava, 1983). The total cholorophyll content of cowpea leaves was significantly increased by seed hardening and pelleting treatments in spite of existing salinity condition in soil. The total cholorophyll content reduced in control under saline conditions was attributed by salt induced weakening of protein-pigment-lipid complex (Strogonov et al., 1970) or increased cholorophyllase activity (Stivsev et al., 1973). Seed hardening with KCl @1% + CaCl2 @ 1% and pelleting with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g kg-1 recorded highest total chlorophyll content of 2.17 mg g-1 (Table 2). Similar results on enhancement in total chlorophyll content were reported by Petolino and Leone (1980) in Phaseolus vulagaris, Yeo and Flowers (1983) in rice and Turan et al., (2007) in wheat. Increased chlorophyll contents observed in pungam leaf powder pelleted seeds could be due to the presence of mineral nutrients like nitrogen, potassium and calcium which play a major role in chlorophyll synthesis (Prakash et al., 2013: Ophelia, 2017).
 

Table 2: Effect of seed hardening and pelleting on physiological parameters of cowpea cv. CO (CP) 7 under natural saline condition.


       
The gas exchange parameters viz., stomatal conductance, intercellular CO2 concentration, transpiration rate and photosynthetic rate were found significantly increased with seeds hardened and  pelleted treatments (Table 3). All these gas exchange parameters were found the highest in seeds hardened with KCl @1% + CaCl2 @ 1% and pelleted with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g kg-1. Similarly, increased gas exchange parameters due to flyash treatment was reported by Anbarasan (2011) in cowpea. Prakash et al., (2018) found that plants treated with pungam leaf powder @ 150 g kg-1 recorded more photosynthesis, transpiration rates and stomatal conductance. Increase in gas exchange parameters might be due to increased enzyme activity, chlorophyll content and presence of growth promoting substances like GA3which leads to more production of photo-assimilates and better growth and development (Prakash et al., 2018). The present results on gas exchange parameters were in agreement with the previous reports of Prakash et al., (2013) and Sathiya Narayanan et al., (2016).
 

Table 3: Effect of seed hardening and pelleting on resultant seed quality characters of cowpea cv. CO (CP) 7 under natural saline condition.


 
Yield parameters
 
The yield parameters such as pod length, number of pods plant-1, pod yield plant-1, number of seeds pod-1 and seed yield plant-1 were found higher in seeds hardened with KCl @1% + CaCl2 @ 1% and pelleted with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g kg+, when compared to the other treatments and control (Table 1). The pungam leaf powder pelleting treatments might have helped in absorbing more soil moisture and nutrients, thus enabling better growth resulting in higher yield (Sai Pradeep Kumar, 2015). Similar observations with increased yield parameters due to seed pelleting under saline condition were reported by Harish Babu et al., (2005), Sathiya Narayanan et al., (2013) and Prakash et al., (2018). Increased pod yield was observed which may be due to the translocation of sugars from complex compounds like carbohydrates which are translocated at greater rate as reported by Dileepkumar et al., (2009).The influence of seed hardening with CaCl2 and KCl observed in present results are in line with the reports of Mishra and Dwivedi (1980) and Sen and Misra (1987). Similarly treatments with neem leaf powder and biofertilizer @ 30 g per kg (Rhizobium) in french bean seeds significantly influenced the growth and yield (Chaya Devi et al., 2017).
 
Resultant seed quality
 
The resultant seeds obtained from treated seeds showed higher mean  than the control for all the seedling characters viz., germination percentage, root length, shoot length, seedling length, dry matter production and vigour index (Table 3). Among the treatments, seeds treated with KCl @1% + CaCl2 @ 1% and pelleted with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g kg-1 recorded the highest mean value for all characters. Increase in the germination percentage of resultant seeds might be due to enhancement in hydration process and absorption of more water by the seeds favoured by the seed pelleting and hardening as reported by Ophelia (2017).
       
The performance of resultant seeds in terms of seedling growth, root length, shoot length, seedling length, dry matter production and vigour index could be due to the modification of physiological and biochemical  nature of the  seeds due to seed pelleting  as reported by Ophelia (2017). These results are in line with the reports on cotton seeds treated with arappu leaf powder + DAP + micronutrient mixture (Rathinavel and Dharmalingam 2000). Similar reports with increase in dry weight with prosopis leaf extract seed treatment  was reported by Sathiya Narayanan et al., (2015) in black gram and Suma (2005) in sesame.

CONCLUSION

From the above results, it could be concluded that the seed treatment  with KCl @1% + CaCl2 @ 1% and pelleted with pungam leaf powder @ 200 g kg-1 will enhance the growth, yield, physiological parameters and resultant seed quality of cowpea under natural saline conditions.

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