DORMANCY BREAKING TECHNIQUE OF OIL PALM

DORMANCY TYPE, GERMINATION PATTERN AND DORMANCY BREAKING TECHNIQUE OF OIL PALM (Elaeis Guineensis Jacq.,) SEEDS 
Mohd Norsazwan bin Ghazali*,
 Associate Prof. Dr Adam Puteh, Prof Dr. Mohd Rafii Yusop,
Department of Crop Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia  *Email : mohdnorsazwan@gmail.com

Oil palm seeds require more than six months to germinate under natural condition. In the first experiment, different method to evaluate dormancy type were conducted on T × T and D × P seeds. This includes physical, morphological and physiological dormancy tests. Results indicated that the seeds were unable to imbibe water, regardless of scarification treatments. This suggests that oil palm seeds exhibit physical dormancy characteristics. Morphological tests on seeds at room temperature indicated that an embryo length of 3.64 or 3.03 mm was required to initiate germination in T × T and D × P seeds, respectively. The applications of heat treatments (40°C) were able to accelerate embryo growth, regardless of treatment duration. On the other hand, application of exogenous GA 3 did not significantly increase germination during physiological dormancy test. The results strongly indicate that oil palm seed exhibits combination of physical, morphological and physiological dormancy type. In the second experiment, alternative techniques to break oil palm seed dormancy were evaluated including adoption of higher temperature treatment (50°C), alternating temperature regimes of high (40°C) and low (7°C) for different duration; as well as combining alternating temperature regimes of high (40°C) and low (7°C) temperatures with growth hormone (gibberellic acid) during germination period. The seeds were then allowed to germinate for 60 days. Parameters evaluated include percentage of normal pre-germinated seeds, percentage abnormalities, percentage of diseased seeds and Coefficient Velocity of Germination. The results indicated that adoption of alternating temperature along with exogenous GA3 application during germination were able to result in similar percentage of normal pre-germinated seeds as the commercially practiced method, with acceptable percentage abnormalities and diseases occurrence level. . This study strongly suggests that there are alternative techniques that can be adopted to break oil.

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