Effect of Soaking and Prechilling Treatment on Seed Germination of Phellodendron amurense Rupr.

Abstract - The seeds of Phellodendron amurense have difficulty to obtain because these plants show dioecism with independent distributions. This experiment was conducted to find the effects of soaking and prechilling treatment on the germination of P. amurense seeds. Seeds were soaked for 3, 5 and 10 days (soaking treatment), and placed on petri-dish at 4 ℃ for 10, 20, 30 and 50 days after soaked at room temperature for 24 hours (prechilling treatment). After the treatments, germination percentage , mean germination time, germination speed and germination performance index were analyzed. As a result of sowing, prechilled seeds for 30 days had the highest percent of germination, whereas all of the soaked seeds showed lower percent of germination than non-treatment (control). In case of mean germination time, only prechilling for 30 days was more effective than control. In germination speed, all of the soaked seeds had lower values than control whereas all prechilled seeds except prechilled seeds for 20 days showed higher values than control. Especial ly prechilled seeds for 30 days showed the highest rate among the prechilling treatments. Germination performance index was similar to germination speed.