Impacts of smoke treatments on germination of cold-stratified seeds in medicinal-rangeland plant Ferula ovina Boiss. (Apiaceae)
2019
Sanaz Zardari | Farshid Ghaderi-far | Hamid Reza Sadeghipour | ebrahim zeinali | Elias Soltani
Ferula ovina Boiss. (Apiaceae) is a perennial rangeland medicinal plant found in the mountainous area of Iran. Due to overexploitation, climate changes in the area, and seed dormancy at time of maturity, the population of this species is being reduced. Accordingly, in the present study the effects of smoke treatments (aerosol smoke and two methods of smoke extract preparation) were investigated on seed germination characteristics of this plant after varying periods of cold stratification including 0, 7, 15, and 30 days. Findings suggested that cold stratification changed significantly the level of seed dormancy and increased the rate and percentage of seed germination. Furthermore, aerosol smoke applied after cold stratification increased the rate and percentage of seed germination. The greatest increase in germination percentage compared to control (20%) was observed in seeds that had been cold-stratified for 7 days and were exposed to aerosol smoke for two minutes. Smoke extracts with concentrations (0.001 - 0.01 v/v) prepared by the two methods also increased the germination of cold stratified seeds so that the maximum percentage of germination (80%) was obtained for seeds cold stratified for 30 days and treated with 0.001 dilution of charred straw solution. However, undiluted smoke water decreased the percentage of seed germination after 0 and 30 days of cold stratification and led to abnormal seedling development. In general, the results of this study demonstrated that smoke treatments improve seed germination percentage and speed of cold stratified Ferula ovina seeds.
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