INVIGOURATION OF SEEDS OF Rauvolfia serpentina and Withania somnifera BY CHEMICAL MANIPULATION TECHNIQUES

Author(s): Amitava Nayek*

Abstract: An experiment was conducted to arrest the ageing-induced fast loss of germination and also to enhance the permeability of seeds of two drug yielding plants viz. Rauvolfia serpentina (L.) Benth. (Apocynaceae) and Withenia somnifera Dunal. (Solanaceae) with antioxidants like reduced glutathione, mercaptoethanol, ascorbic acid, cysteine and a growth retardant salicylic acid. The seeds were pretreated with concentrations of 10-2 to 10-5 M for 8 Hr. The pretreated seeds were then imposed for accelerated ageing treatment for 20 and 40 days at 99.1% Relative Humidity (RH) at 30 ± 2 °C. Field emergency capacity was found better in chemically pretreated seeds than non-treated seeds. Plant potentiality, measured in terms of chlorophyll and protein content, Hill activity was higher in the plants developed from pretreated seeds ignoring the adverse storage condition. Catalase and peroxidase enzyme activity was also remarkably supports Hill activity. Therefore, the trend of activities of antioxidants follows: reduced glutathione > salicylic acid > mercaptolethanol > ascorbic acid > cysteine. The most effective concentration was 10-4 M in both the cases antioxidant and growth retardant.

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