Seed treatments to release dormancy of Setaria sphacelata cv.‘Narok’

Setaria sphacelata cv. Narok is one of the most popular forages applied in grassland production and ecological environment construction in southern China. However, the low seeds production and deep dormancy restrict the popularization and utilization of this forage. Four different methods including mechanical treatment and various chemical treatments were applied to break dormancy of Narok seeds from Yunnan Province. The results showed that all of these four different treatments could break Narok seed dormancy with varied effects. The treatments of piercing skin after removing shell and soaking in 25% HCl solution for four minutes were more useful than the others. The germination potential, germination rate, germination index and the vigor index of piercing skin after removing shell was 32%, 33%, 8.85 and 0.012 0, respectively, and these four indices of soaking in 25% HCl solution for four minutes was 31%, 35%, 8.47 and 0.014 3, respectively. The indices of these two treatments were significantly higher than the corresponding index from control(P＜0.05), but there was no significant difference between each other (P＞0.05).