Seed priming enhances chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) germination and seedling establishment under varying thermal and moisture conditions

Seed priming is a unique technique used to improve seed performance in the field. It can overcome the major constraint of chickpea production in areas where farmers do not have enough resources to accelerate the seedbed preparation. This experiment investigated how different priming approaches; soil moisture regimes and soaking temperature affect the germination and seedling growth of chickpea. It was a three factorial experiment laid out in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. Experimental factors were three priming conditions (non-priming, hydro-priming and osmo-priming), two soaking temperatures (21°C and 27 °C) and three soil moisture regimes [50 % field capacity (FC), 75 % FC and 90 % FC]. Among the three moisture regimes tested, osmo-primed chickpea seeds at 90 % FC achieved the highest germination (99.33 %), whereas non-primed seeds at 50 % FC showed the lowest germination (78.50 %). Osmo-priming at 21°C resulted in the highest germination percentage (87.89 %) and significantly increased root (12.8 cm) and shoot lengths (15.4 cm), as well as root (9.56 mg plant-1) and shoot weight (9.96 mg plant-1), whereas non-primed seeds at 27 °C showed the poorest performance across these parameters. The findings indicate that seed priming, especially osmo-priming at 21 °C under 90 % field capacity, is a promising strategy to improve germination efficiency and seedling establishment in chickpea.