Effect of botanicals and insecticides seed treatment and containers on seed longevity of black gram under natural ageing conditions

Abstract

Good storage is the basic requirement in seed production programme as maintenance of high seed viability and vigour from harvest to planting is of utmost importance in a seed production programme. Therefore, inexpensive, simple and practicable technology to prolong the shelf life of seeds under ambient condition is immensely needed. Hence, an experiment was carried out to study the effect of seed treatment with neem oil, nimbicidin, emamectin benzoate 5 SG, deltamethrin 2.8 EC, novuluron EC on black gram seed quality under ambient conditions. The seeds without any seed treatment were included as control. The treated and untreated seeds were stored in cloth bag and polylined cloth bag. The results revealed that, botanicals and emamectin benzoate seed treatments were significantly superior in controlling the storage insect and maintaining higher seed quality up to 10 months of storage when compared to control. Among the chemicals, the emamectin benzoate 5 SG @ 40 mg kg^-1 of seed found better by recording significantly higher germination percentage (80.28), vigour index I (2124) and dry weight of seedlings (43.14 mg) and lower electrical conductivity (0.939 dSm-1) and seed damage (0.00 %) compared to control (78.78%, 2012, 38.90 mg, 0.942 dSm-1, respectively) at the end of 10th month of storage. The emamectin benzoate 5 SG and nimbicidintreated seeds stored in polylined cloth bags were considered as effective seed storage management approach in blackgram.