Authors:
Abstract:
The study on enhancing germination of Garcinia kola was conducted using 5 pre-treatments. These included soaking seeds in cold water for 96, 72, and 48 hours for treatments 1, 2, and 3 respectively, cutting seeds at the opposite end to the radicle with kitchen knife (nicking) for treatment 4 and control treatment (untreated seeds for treatment 5).
The aim of this study was to determine the best pre-treatment for optimum germination of Garcinia kola “seed”. Germination tests were carried out after pre-treatments for 10 months using one hundred seeds for each treatment in ICRAF nursery established at IITA station in Onne, Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. The result showed that seed cutting (nicking) was the most suitable pre-sowing treatment to increase seed germination of Garcinia kola. In the first 6 weeks of testing, germination did not occur in all the treatments. From the seventh week, germination commenced in treatments 1 and 4. Whereas treating the seeds with mechanical scarification (nicking) significantly (P<0.05) enhanced germination of Garcinia kola, seed germination was also significantly (P<0.05) improved, at least for up to 33 weeks, by soaking the seeds in cold water for 96 hours. The wide variation in germination percentage, germination rate and germination speed of G. kola depended on dormancy that was overcome by seed treatments prior to sowing.