Seed Priming with Salts of Nitrate Enhances Nitrogen use Efficiency in Rice

Ashish Kumar Srivastava¹, Anaytullah Siddique², Manoj Kumar Sharma³ and Bandana Bose^4*

¹National Seed Corporation Limited, Samastipur, Bihar, India

²Department of Agronomy, School of Agriculture, LPU, Jalandhar, India

³Main oil Seed Research Station Junagadh Agricultural University, Junagadh, Gujarat, India

⁴Department of Plant Physiology, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU, Varanasi, India

*Corresponding Author : Bandana Bose
Department of Plant Physiology, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU, Varanasi, India
E-mail: Bandana_bose2000@yahoo.co.in and bbosebhu@gmail.com

Received: July 28, 2017 Accepted: October 09, 2017 Published: October 12, 2017

Citation: Srivastava AK, Siddique A, Sharma MK, Bose B (2017) Seed Priming with Salts of Nitrate Enhances Nitrogen use Efficiency in Rice. Vegetos 30:4. doi: 10.5958/2229-4473.2017.00199.9

An experiment was conducted to investigate the absorption and utilization of nitrogen by rice seed treatment with Nitrate salts (halo priming) and distilled water (hydro-priming) in two successive years. Results revealed that seed priming with Mg (NO3)2, KNO3 and Distilled water always perform better than non-primed control sets in enhancing seed germination and nitrate reductase enzyme activity in leaves that promote to nitrogen accumulation in different plant parts. This seed priming technique further enhanced soluble and insoluble nitrogen content in seed, and also the nitrogen gathering capacity in seed and straw (Kg h-1). Seed priming was also found beneficial in encouraging grain yield after applying Kg-1 nitrogen in the soil. This technique proved promising in more nitrogen accumulation and less nitrogen loss. Among seed priming treatment Mg (NO3)2 performed the best in respect to all measured parameters followed by KNO3 and hydro-primed one in comparison to control sets. These results clearly indicated that higher yield in rice can be achieved via improving the nitrogen absorption and utilization by growing crop, raised with seed priming treatment especially using Mg (NO3)2 salts.