Effects of Seed Priming on Early Seedling Growth and Germination
Keywords:
Seed priming, Germination rate, Seedling vigor, Hydropriming, Osmopriming, BioprimingAbstract
By starting metabolic processes without radicle emergence, seed priming is a pre-sowing therapy that improves seed germination, vigor, and early seedling growth. Seed priming has become a successful method to boost crop performance and productivity when environmental conditions impact crop establishment. This study assesses how several seed priming methods - hydropriming, osmopriming, and biopriming - affect the early seedling growth and germination behavior of particular crop species. Germination percentage, mean germination time, seedling length, fresh and dry weight, and vigor index were among the characteristics that were measured while the seeds were treated under controlled conditions. According to the findings, primed seeds germinated more quickly and consistently than unprimed controls. While osmopriming greatly increased seedling vigor and biomass accumulation, hydropriming boosted water uptake and initial germination rates. The development of roots and shoots was further aided by biopriming with advantageous microbial inoculants, suggesting a synergistic influence on early growth. All priming treatments significantly improved germination and seedling growth parameters, according to statistical analysis, with osmopriming demonstrating the best overall efficacy. These results suggest that seed priming is a useful and affordable strategy to enhance crop establishment, especially in situations where soil moisture and temperature are below ideal. In agriculture, seed priming can result in uniform stands, quicker crop establishment, and possibly increased yields. It is advised that more study be done to clarify the physiological and molecular processes that underlie priming-induced stress tolerance and to improve procedures for extensive field use in a variety of crop species.
Downloads
References
1. Ahmad P, et al. (2013) Role of phytohormones in alleviating abiotic stress in plants. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry.
2. Ali Q, et al. (2019) Effects of osmopriming on antioxidative defense system in maize under drought stress. Frontiers in Plant Science.
3. Ashraf M (2009) Biotechnological approach of improving plant salt tolerance using antioxidants as markers. Biotechnology Advances.
4. Ashraf M, Foolad MR (2005) Pre-sowing seed treatment—a shotgun approach to improve germination, plant growth, and stress tolerance. Advances in Agronomy 88:223-271.
5. Bajaj D, et al. (2020) Biopriming with beneficial microbes enhances seedling vigor of legumes. Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science.
6. Basra SMA (2006) Seedling Vigour in Crops – Physiological and Biological Aspects.
7. Basra SMA, Malik CP (2006) Biochemical changes in seeds during priming. Seed Science and Technology.
8. Basra SMA, Farooq M, Afzal I (2005) Physiological and biochemical aspects of seed vigor enhancement treatments. Seed Science and Technology 33:623-628.
9. Bradford KJ (1990) Water relations in seed germination. Seed Science Research.
10. Bungard RA, McDonald MB (1998) Influence of priming duration on seed performance. Seed Science and Technology.
11. Chandra S, et al. (2018) Effect of osmopriming with PEG on germination of pulses. Legume Research.
12. Farooq M, et al. (2013) Seed priming strategies for sustainable crop production. Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science.
13. Finch-Savage WE, Leubner-Metzger G (2006) Seed dormancy and environmental signals. New Phytologist.
14. Giri S, Schillinger WF (2003) Osmopriming improves winter wheat emergence. Crop Science.
15. Golbashy M, et al. (2013) Priming effects on salinity tolerance of wheat seeds. Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology.
16. Gyawali A, Bhusal B, Bhandari N, Lamsal G (2025) Effect of seed priming on germination and seedling growth of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L. cv. Gaurabh 555). Journal of Agriculture and Forestry University.
17. Harris D, et al. (2001) Improving seed germination and plant establishment in rain fed agriculture through seed priming. Field Crops Research 71:1-13.
18. Hussain S, et al. (2013) Seed priming improves germination of rice under stressful environments. Pakistan Journal of Botany.
19. Khandelwal A, et al. (2011) Hydropriming in tomato improves stand and yield. Scientia Horticulturae.
20. Kohli A, et al. (2016) Role of priming in enhancing germination and early seedling growth in pulses. Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences.
21. Liu X, et al. (2014) Effects of priming on seed germination and growth of maize under low temperature. African Journal of Biotechnology.
22. McDonald MB (2000) Seed priming. In: Seed Technology and Its Biological Basis, pp 287-325.
23. McDonald MB, Hubert JE (1997) Seed treatments and seed quality improvement. Advances in Agronomy.
24. Nakaune M (2011) Recent advances in seed priming research. Journal of Agricultural Science.
25. Nawaz A, et al. (2013) Effect of osmopriming on maize under drought conditions. Journal of Agronomy.
26. Newton RJ, et al. (2010) Influence of seed priming on germination and plant quality. Seed Science Technology.
27. Paparella S, et al. (2015) Seed priming techniques and molecular mechanisms. Plant Science.
28. Paparella S, et al. (2015) Seed priming: state of the art and new perspectives. Plant Cell Reports 34:1281-1293.
29. Rajjou L, et al. (2012) Seed germination and vigor. Annual Review of Plant Biology.
30. Rhaman MS (2025) Seed priming before the sprout: revisiting an established technique for stress resilient germination. Seeds 4(3):29.
31. Sethar S, et al. (2024) Effect of seed priming on seed germination and seedling growth of wheat. International Journal of Economic and Environmental Geology 15(3).
32. Verma SB (2024) Seed priming techniques in modern agriculture: methods and benefits. Journal of Environmental Agriculture and Agroecosystem Management.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Authors
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/
