INDUCTION OF DROUGHT TOLERANT CAPABILITY OF MUNGBEAN THROUGH HYDROGEN PEROXIDE (H 2 ) AND HYDROPRIMING O 2

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at the Laboratory of Department of Agronomy, Sher-e- Bangla Agricultural University, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka-1207 during the period from July 2017 to September 2017. Three different experiments were conducted in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with five replications. Two mungbean varieties namely - BARI Mung 6 and BINA Moog 8 were used as test crops while H 2 and distilled water were used for osmo and hydro priming. Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) was used to induce drought stress. Data on germination rate (GR), shoot length (SL), root length (RL), shoot dry weight (SDW), root dry weight (RDW), relative water content (RWC), water saturation deficit (WSD), water retention capacity (WRC), coefficient of velocity of germination (CV) and vigor index (VI) were recorded. The first experiment was carried out to find out the effect of different concentrations of H 2 O 2 on germination and growth behavior of two mungbean varieties (BARI Mung 6 and BINA Moog 8). It was found that BARI Mung 6 showed the highest GR (90.31%), SL (145.10 mm), RL (91.25 mm), SDW (64.24 mg), RDW (23.23 mg), RWC (89.25%), WRC (21.81), CV (21.48) and VI (214.20) when the seeds were primed with 2% H 2 O 2 and the lowest from BINA Moog 8 with 8% H 2 O 2 . The second experiment was carried out to optimize the priming time on the germination and growth behavior of BARI Mung 6. It was found that priming with 2% H 2 O 2 for 6 hours gave the highest GR (90.21%), SL (139.90 mm), RL (78.29 mm), SDW (59.86 mg), RDW (20.89 mg), RWC (89.17%), WRC (20.72), CV (20.78) and VI (197.40) and the lowest from 2% H 2 O 2 for 15 hours. In the third experiment, germination and growth behavior of primed seeds of BARI Mung 6 under 5 different concentrations of PEG i.e. 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% were evaluated. It was observed that highest GR (91.12%), SL (132.30 mm), RL (90.02 mm), SDW (65.40 mg), RDW (22.94 mg), RWC (88.40%), WRC (20.85), CV (21.11) and VI (202.80) were obtained from primed seeds placed without drought stress. But under drought stress, the highest GR (88.21%), SL (128.20 mm), RL (85.09 mm), SDW (61.32 mg), RDW (20.74 mg), RWC (85.48%), WRC (19.60), CV (19.80) and VI (188.50) were achieved from primed seeds placed with 5% PEG and the lowest from 20% PEG. There were a slow reduction observed with the increasing of drought concentration from 0 to 20% PEG. The result of the study suggest that 2% H 2 O 2 with 6 hours priming time effectively alleviated the adverse effect of drought stress. O 2