Seed Pelleting with Plant Nutrients on Seed Quality, Seedling Growth and Storability of Tobacco Seed

Abstract

Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) is an economic crop whose seeds are very small. This cause
seeds are uneven germination, produce small size and considerably slow develop seedlings. The aims of
this experiment were to increase the size of tobacco seed by pelleting with plant nutrients and study effect
of the pelleting on quality of seed, some seedling growth characteristics and storability of tobacco seeds.
The experiment was conducted at laboratory of Seed Technology Section, Seed Processing Plant,
Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University. The tobacco seeds were pelleted with 2 types of fillers; 60
and 150 g of talcum and pumice respectively and using 1% (w/v) of Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC)
40 ml as a binder. The seeds were pelleted together with 3 rates of plant nutrients, 1, 2 and 3 times per 3
g of tobacco seeds by seed pellet-machine model SKK11. After pelleting process, the pelleted seeds were

taken for seed quality testing and some seedling growth characteristics of tobacco, found that the pelleted
tobacco seeds with plant nutrients had higher statistical significance in both germination percentage and
speed of germination than non-pelleted seeds, under laboratory condition. For the greenhouse condition,
the pelleted tobacco seeds with 1 time of plant nutrients had higher statistical significance in both
germination percentage and speed of germination when compared to non-pelleted seeds. After storage
for a period of 4 months the pelleted tobacco seeds with 1 time of plant nutrients still provides the best
quality and higher than non-pelleted seeds, but there were non statistically different with the pelleted
tobacco seeds with 2 time of plant nutrients. In addition, it also found that the tobacco seedlings
germinated from the pelleted seeds with all rates of plant nutrients has grown better than seedlings of
non-pelleted tobacco seeds and pelleted seeds without plant nutrient.