STUDY ON EFFECT OF STORAGE CONDITIONS ON HEALTH STATUS OF OKRA SEEDS

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in Seed Pathology Lab in the Department of Plant Pathology, SAU, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka-1207 during July 2013 to June 2014 to determine the quality and health of okra seed and determination of seed health status during seed storage. Five storage container viz. T 1 : plastic container, T : plastic bag, T 3 : polythene coated gunny bag, T 4 : gunny bag and T : earthen pot and three seed treatments viz. N 0 : no treatment, N 1 5 : seed treated with Provax-200 and N : seed treated with neem leaf powder extract were tested. Data were recorded on the percent infestation of storage seeds by fungi and also on quality attributes under different treatments during the seed storage at 4, 8 and 12 months. The experiment was laid out in two factors Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications and the mean were adjusted by DMRT at 5% level. In case of storage container and seed treatments, provax-200 treated seeds stored in plastic container (T 2 1 N ) showed significantly lower moisture content (7.98%) at 4 months of storage than that of other treatments while non - treated seeds stored in gunny bag (T 1 ) showed the maximum moisture content (17.66%) at 12 months of storage. Similarly, percentage of seed infested minimum in T 1 N The prevalence of different fungi were Fusarium spp (0.13%), Chaetomium globosum (0.72%), Aspergillus flavus (0.52%), Aspergillus niger (0.87%), Rhizopus stolonifer (0.59%) and Curvularia spp (0.80%) at 4 months of storage. Seed infested was highest in T 4 N 0 1. where prevalence of Fusarium spp (9.27%), Chaetomium globosum (11.96%), Aspergillus flavus (18.26%), Aspergillus niger (16.63%), Rhizopus stolonifer (8.72%) and Curvularia spp (8.20%) at 12 months of storage. In contrast, provax200

treated seeds stored in plastic container (T 1 N ) showed the maximum germination (96.74%), longest shoot (21.04 cm) and root (11.91 cm), highest seed

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4 N 2 0 vigor index (3229.0), highest weight of dry seedlings (55.72 g) at 4 months of storage while non-treated seeds stored in gunny bag (T 4 N ) showed lower performance in seed germination (39.71%), shoot length (11.33 cm), root length (6.20 cm), seedling vigor index (731.30), dry weight of seedlings (33.33 g) and filed emergence (34.51%) at 12 months of storage in this study. The above result proved that the studied attributes considerably increase with increasing storage period except seed germination, seedlings shoot and root length, seed vigor index, dry weight of seedlings and field emergence where plastic container (T 0 ) and seed treated with provax-200 (N ) singly or their interaction effect had highly efficient for obtaining the greater performance regarding quality attributes of storage okra seed and also for controlling the fungi species. The storage plastic container along with provax-200 treated seeds showed the best storage performance in storage of okra seed. 1

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