Influence of Different Seed Priming Treatments on Yield and Yield Components of Lentil under Terminal Drought Stress Condition

To study the effect of seed priming on seedling emergence characteristics of lentil and evaluate its interaction with drought stress at flowering stage, an experiment was carried out as split plot in a randomized complete block design with three replications at research station of Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran. The main factor consisted drought stress with two levels (conventional irrigation and withholding irrigation at flowering stage) and subplots were seed priming treatments in four levels (priming with zinc sulfate solution, urea solution, distilled water and no-primed). The results showed that priming treatments had positive effects on emergence characteristics, yield and yield components of lentil. Seed priming with zinc sulfate and urea solutions reduced time to 50 percent emergence by 20.15% and increased emergence uniformity coefficient by 15.5 %. The number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, 100 seeds weight, grain and biological yields of stressed plants were reduced in comparison with the conventional irrigation treatment. In this study, seed priming with zinc sulfate solution and distilled water increased the mean of pods per plant by 19% under drought stress conditions. The mean of pods per plant increased by 47% when using zinc sulfate and urea solutions under conventional irrigation conditions. The highest number of seeds per pod (1.3) was obtained through priming with zinc sulfate and urea solutions. Compared to no-primed treatment under drought stress conditions, priming with urea solution increased the grain yield by 28.6% (grain yield was 1652.22 kg/ha) and under conventional irrigation conditions, priming with zinc sulfate solution increased the grain yield by 29.2% (grain yield was 2848.57 kg/ha)