Effect of Stratification and Gibberellic acid on seed germination of Capsicum(Capsicum annum)

Abstract

Capsicum or Sweet pepper (Capsicum annum) is a perennial herbaceous plant in the nightshade family (Solanaceae). It is one of the world's most widely used spices as well as vegetable, colorant and pharmaceutical. The climate, environmental condition and other important agronomic attributes of Bangladesh has promising aspects for successful cultivation of Capsicum. But at the very beginning, it is necessary to identify the challenges and take proper measures to accelerate the production of Capsicum in our country. The first challenge for cultivating this plant is long germination time which takes 2-3 weeks in compared with model plant Arabidopsis that requires only 3-4 days for germination. In this regards, the application of stratification or cold treatment and gibberellic acid (GA3) can be a productive solution to combat this challenge. Therefore, the sterilized seeds were sown on petri dishes containing filter paper and MS media, separately. Then the seeds were incubated for 2 days and 4 days at three different temperatures viz. 4°C, 20°C and 27°C and identified appropriate GA3 concentration to reduce the number of days required for Capsicum seed germination. A high seed germination rate (90%) was found within 4- 5 days when seeds were incubated for 4 days at 27°C temperature compared to 4°C and 20°C temperature. GA3 at 40 mg/L concentrations showed a very high response for germination (100%) of Capsicum seed compared to other concentrations (0 mg/L, 5 mg/L, 10 mg/L, 20 mg/L). A Combination of high temperature (27°C) and GA3 at 40mg/L concentration showed 90% germination within 5 days compared to 0 mg/L of GA3 at 27°C where only 65% seeds were germinated within 5 day.