Saudi Journal of Biomedical Research (SJBR)
Volume-3 | Issue-01 | 9-13
Original Research Article
Effects of Watering Regimes on Germination and Early Seedling Growth of Tetrapleura tetraptera (Schum and Thonn) Taub
Comfort Ajeigbe Dada, Joshua Kayode, Sunday Arowosegbe
Published : Feb. 28, 2018
Abstract
This study examined the watering regime that will enhance best
germination and early seedling growth of Tetrapleura tetraptera. Seeds and
seedlings of the plant were subjected to five different watering regimes viz:
watering once weekly with 50ml, watering twice weekly with 50ml, watering once
weekly with 100ml, watering twice weekly with 100ml and watering with 100ml
only on the day of planting (as control for the seeds experiment), no watering (as
control for the seedling experiments). The results of the experiment showed that
watering once weekly with 100ml was the most effective watering regime for
enhancing seed germination. This resulted in 85% germination, followed by the
seeds watered twice weekly with 50ml (65%) and watering twice weekly with
100ml (50%). Other watering regimes were less or not effective. While watering
twice weekly with 100ml was the most effective watering regime for enhancing
seedling growth in this plant. This resulted in significantly highest plant height,
number of leaves and broadest leaf area (22.00 cm, 15.00 and 27.51cm2
respectively) at the third month of planting. It also resulted in highest seedling stem
girth (3.50 cm) though this was not significantly different from seedling treated with
other watering regimes except for seedling treated with no watering which gave 0.20
cm. The results of these studies demonstrated that water supply may be a limitation
for raising Tetrapleura tetraptera in the nursery as the soil moisture influenced
germinability and early growth of this plant.