Effect of Watering Schedules on Seed Germination of Two Major Agroforestry Species Dalbergia sissoo and Gmelina arborea

Aims: Water is an important natural resource supporting life and growth of plants heavily relies on water availability throughout its life cycle. Moisture stress is a major limiting factor in forest crops leading to unsuccessful seed germination. This study investigates the impact of moisture stress on the seed germination of two important agroforestry species Dalbergia sissoo and Gmelina arborea through manipulating watering schedules after sowing seeds.

Study Design: Two independent experiments for Dalbergia sissoo and Gmelina arborea were designed in a Completely Randomized Block Design (CRBD) with six treatments and three replications for each treatment

Place of Study: Faculty of Forestry, Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi.

Methodology: The complete experiment was carried inside a temporary polyhouse where the experimental materials were exposed to the six different watering schedule treatments. The first irrigation for all the treatments were started at the same time. The data recorded during the experiment were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) for statistical significance and difference among treatments were determined by Duncan’s Multiple range test at (P = .05) level.

Results: Significant differences were observed among the treatments and the results show that with increasing level of moisture stress, the germination performance in both species is highly reduced both in terms of germination percentage and germination energy.

Conclusion: Daily watering to the seeds can help to achieve maximum and early seed germination as evident from data of germination energy with maximum values recorded for the treatments with daily watering schedule.