Effects of temperature and soil moisture on seedling growth of Vicia sativa

The interaction effects of temperature and soil moisture on seedling growth of Vicia sativa were studied using the pot experiment to determine the optimum temperature and soil moisture at seedling stage. There were total 20 treatments including five soil moisture contents (50% FMC, 60% FMC, 70% FMC, 80% FMC, and 90% FMC, FMC means field maximum capacity) and four temperatures (10, 15, 20 and 25 ℃). At seedling stage, V.sativa was greatly affected by temperature and soil moisture. Under all of the four temperatures, 80% FMC and 90% FMC soil moisture content were not beneficial for seedling growth of V.sativa because both the germination rate and the dry weight of total biomass of 80% FMC and 90% FMC decreased significantly (P0.05) compared with the 70% FMC soil moisture content. Under 70% FMC soil moisture content and 20 ℃ treatment, V.sativa performed best which had the highest germination rate of 96.87% and the highest total bimass of 3.0833 g and showed significant difference (P0.05) with every other treatment. It suggested that the growth conditions of moisture content between 50% FMC and 70% FMC and temperature at 15～20 ℃ were optimum for V.sativa seedling.