Seed germination and dormancy tests of some rangeland species of Northern Khorasan province, Iran

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that seeds of some rangeland plant species are dormant at<br><br>maturity. Seed dormancy is a characteristic that can both help maximize the probability of seedling<br><br>establishment and spread the risk of recruitment failure across years. In order to investigate the<br><br>germination properties and seed dormancy of 26 rangeland species (from poaceae, leguminoseae,<br><br>Caryophyllaceae, Zygophyllaceae, Apiaceae, Convolvulaceae, Rosaceae, Caryophyllaceae,<br><br>Chenopodiaceae and Asteraceae families) collected from Northern Khorasan province, an experiment<br><br>was conducted in the Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in autumn 2008. The<br><br>experiment was conducted in two sets which were preliminary stage with distilled water to evaluate seed<br><br>germination of the species and some treatment for dormant seeds as second stage of the experiment.<br><br>Treatments included sterilization for infected species, scarification using sand papers with different<br><br>toughness, Light/darkness period, Removing covering structure, KNO3 and temperature for breaking<br><br>seed dormancy. Results showed that seeds of family of Poaceae had no dormancy while seeds of<br><br>species from family of Leguminoseae were dormant. Seed dormancy breaking treatments had positive<br><br>effects on germination of seeds of other species, too.