On-farm seed priming with zinc nutrition: a cost effective way to increase the yield of resource poor farmers

Among the micronutrients, Zinc (Zn) is one of the essential nutrient due to its involvement in many metabolic processes in plant. The research was conducted to optimize Zn seed priming treatments for improving the yield attributing traits and crop yield of pea and maize crops. Different priming levels of Zn (water soaking- without zinc, 1%, 2% and 3% ZnSO4), were applied with three priming durations (4, 8 and 12 hours). The priming treatments were compared with basal dose of recommended NPK + ZnSO4 @ 25 kg ha(-1) and farmers' practice (40% N of RDF + unprimed seed- control). The results showed that seed priming with 1% ZnSO4 for 12 hours solution increased yield attributing traits (length of pea pods, number of pods/plant, number of grains/pod and shelling in pea pods) and yield of green peas, however in maize crop yield attributing traits (length of maize cobs, number of cobs/plant, number of grains/cob, shelling in maize cobs, girth of maize cobs and 1000-grain weight of maize) and yield were found maximum due to priming with 2% for 12 hours duration.