Abstract

The harmful effects of chemicals and the side effects of chemical drugs on human health have a widely focused global attention on herbal drugs and medicinal plants. The increasing use of medicinal plants in the world is more than enough to show the significance of cultivating and producing such plants. Grains of most medicinal plants have very long dormancy periods, so shortening the dormancy period and increasing sprouting rates through laboratory methods may be effective in the proliferation of medicinal plants. SalviaL. is a member of the family Lamiaceae with more than 900 species all over the world. One of the major standards of seed quality is the 1000 grain weight, which is effective on sprouting, seed potential, seedling growth, and plant performance. Therefore, an experiment was run in the form of completely random blocks in 3 iterations to study the effects of the 1000 grain weight on the sprouting rate and seed potential of Salvia L. Ten different 1000 seed weight treatments were used in a standard sprouting test and accelerated aging test inside a germinating machine. The experiments were run in three iterations, each including 50 seeds based on rules set forth by the International Seed Testing Association. The experiments tended to analyze seed properties such as sprouting percentage, seedling length, and weight of dried seedling. Obtained data was analyzed by SAS software. Results indicated that in the standard sprouting test, the 1000 grain weight had significant effects on growth traits such as length and weight of dry seedling, yet it had no significant effect on sprouting percentage. In addition, in the accelerated aging test the 1000 seed weight had a significant effect on sprouting percentage and dry seedling weight, while there was no significant effect on seedling length.

Key words: Salvia L., sprouting, 1000 grain weight, standard sprouting test, accelerated aging test.