Effects of various seed priming methods on vegetable crops: A Meta-Analysis

Considerable research has been done globally in recent years around the world to study the effect of various seed priming methods on crops. Surprisingly, many of these seed priming methods on yields show dissimilar or even contradictory results. Meta-analysis is a new research direction in Agriculture/horticulture science that sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of previous studies on seed priming methods and helps us to obtain accurate and precise conclusions. Interestingly, the effect of seed priming methods on germination metrics, seedling emergence, and morphological, physiological, and biochemical attributes in vegetables under stressful and non-stress conditions has not been quantitatively performed using meta-analysis methods so far. For the first time, we performed a meta-analysis study based on a dataset we collected over a ۵۰-year period of research in seed priming methods. Our meta-analysis consists of ۱۸۳ studies and articles and covers ۵۷ species from ۱۷ plant families using ۸۴۴۱ observations. According to previous studies, we know that seed priming before planting (۱) enhances germination indices, seedling vigor, growth, and productivity of vegetable seeds, and (۲) reduces most adverse effects compared to non-primed seeds even under undesirable conditions. While many published works of literature have already confirmed the positive effects of priming, a meta-analysis is essential for quantitatively and accurately evaluating these positive effects. Accordingly, this kind of comprehensive review helps and gives an overview for many vegetable researchers to establish the global picture in their research precisely for seed priming methods and enable them to distinguish knowledge gaps among these numerous existing studies that have been used in this review.

کلیدواژه ها:

germination ، horticultural crop seeds ، seed priming ، seed vigor ، meta-analysis”.