Influence of Priming on Emergence, Weed Infestation, Growth and Yield of Wheat Sown under Different Tillage Practices

Tillage practices are generally used to prepare seedbed and to control weeds but frequent use of tillage practices accelerate the degradation of soil resources and creates plough pan. However, zero tillage (ZT) has potential to overcome the tillage-induced restrictions and ensure timely wheat planting as well. Moreover, ZT resulted in poor and erratic emergence while seed priming could be used to improve emergence under ZT. Hence this experiment was conducted to evaluate the role of seed priming to improve wheat performance under varying tillage practices. Wheat seeds were soaked in water for 8 h (on-farm priming), CaCl2 solution (psi s - 1.25 MPa; osmopriming) for 18 h and aerated water (hydro-priming) for 18 h. Unprimed dry seeds were used as control. Primed and unprimed seeds were sown under ZT, conventional tillage (CT), deep tillage (DT) and on beds. Zero tilled wheat observed delayed and poor emergence; however, seed priming, osmopriming in particular, resulted earlier and more synchronized emergence under all tillage practices. Zero tilled wheat had more weed prevalence while DT and bed sowing (BS) recorded lesser weeds infestation. Osmopriming resulted in quick and more uniform stand leading to significantly better allometric traits and crop yield. Bed sown wheat using osmoprimed seeds harvested the maximum yield due to increase in all yield related traits while zero tilled wheat using unprimed seeds behaved poorly in this regard. In conclusion, bed sown wheat using osmoprimed seeds observed early and uniform emergence, lesser weeds infestation, higher wheat yield and net returns. (C) 2017 Friends Science Publishers