Effect of Pre-treatments on Germination of Pterocarpus marsupium Roxb. for Developing Field Gene-Banks in Eastern India

Aims: Pterocarpus marsupium Roxb. is an important timber species with high medicinal properties belonging to the Fabaceae family. The species is severely threatened by anthropogenic and ecological pressures coupled with less natural regeneration. No results in vegetative propagation methods and very less germination is reported for the species under nursery conditions. This study investigates the germination potential of P. marsupium seeds under the prevailing climatic conditions of regions in eastern India.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was carried out at the ICFRE - Institute of Forest Productivity (IFP), Lalgutwa, Ranchi, during the 24th to the 32nd Meteorological Standard Week (MSW) of 2022, spanning from June to August.

Methodology: Seeds were collected from three CPTs selected from natural forests of Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal and the experiment was carried out following split plot design. Observations on several germination parameters and seed vigour indices were recorded until eight weeks after sowing and subjected to factor multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) in SPSS 25.0.

Results: The experiment revealed that alternate wetting and drying of seeds significantly (P <. 001) outperformed all other treatments with a highest germination percentage of 60±1.196%. Accessions from Jharkhand and West Bengal exhibited significantly (P < .001) better vigour indices (1959.8, 1855.35 for SVI-I and 538.715, 527.742 for SVI-II, respectively) compared to the accession from Bihar (1796.49 and 532.618 for SVI-I and SVI-II). Although the study did not find any significant interaction between the treatments and accession, there was a statistically significant impact on the aggregate dependent variables (F (126,503.279) = 1.579, P <. 001; Wilks' Λ = .077).

Conclusion: The results of this study report an economically feasible and rapid seed treatment method for establishing field gene banks of P. marsupium in eastern India to aid its ex-situ conservation practices.