ROLE OF SEED PRIMING WITH ALBIT BIO-STIMULANT FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF SEED VIGOR POTENTIAL OF TOMATO (LYCOPERSICON ESCULENTUM)

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges at the present times becoming a global threat to the food and nutritional security of the world especially for plants like tomato which are sensitive with respect to their climatic requirements and other related factors. Thus, the study was conducted to examine the role seed priming with bio-stimulants (Albit and Albit^br) for the improvement of seed vigor potential of tomato using four cultivars namely; Revansh, Malets, Fenaric and Telecman. Seeds of each cultivar were primed (treated) with 2ml/L (Regular Albit/water), 2ml/L (Albit^br/water), 2ml/L (Mixture of regular Albit + Albit^br /water) and some seeds were kept unprimed to be regarded as control. The experiment was laid out to fit a completely randomized design (CRD). The results of the study indicated that there were significant differences on all the seed vigor parameters except in the dry matter % of seedlings among the cultivars of tomato, with Malets cultivar resulting into the highest values 37.53%, 25cm and 5.06g of seedling emergence, seedling length and seedling fresh weight respectively. Unlike the lone effect the seed priming which did not have a significant impact on all the physiological seed quality parameters, the interaction treatments (cultivar-seed priming), resulted into a significantly different values on the seedling emergence %, Seedling height and seedling dry matter %. Having observed the results of the interaction treatments on all the above indicated parameters, all the interaction treatments of Malets and telecman cultivars except Malets-Albit^br and Telecman-Albit can equally be regarded as best interaction treatments.