QUALIDADE FÍSICA E FISIOLÓGICA DE SEMENTES DE TRÊS CULTIVARES DE ALGODÃO DURANTE A COLHEITA E BENEFICIAMENTO

Abstract

The use of high quality cotton seeds is essential for the performance of the crop in the field. High vigor seeds guarantee fast and uniform germination and emergence. However, in breeding programs, the tolerance of seeds to mechanical damage throughout the production process is not taken into consideration. The objective of this work was carried out in order to evaluate the physiological quality and susceptibility to mechanical damage during harvesting and processing of cotton seeds of cultivars, TMG 44 B2RF, TMG 47 B2RF, and TMG 31 B3RF, produced in the municipality of Correntina-BA. The experiment was conducted in the Ciaseeds seed analysis laboratory, located on the Serrana farm. Ten simple seed samples were collected from each point, including: manual harvesting, mechanized harvesting, ginning and processing. After homogenizing the samples, a working sample of 3kg of seeds was removed with linter, for each point. The seeds were delinted in the laboratory using 98% sulfuric acid, then neutralized with calcium hydroxide, dried at room temperature, then homogenized and reduced to 1kg of medium sample. The experimental design used was (DIC) in a 3x4 factorial scheme, with 4 subsamples of 50 seeds. The water content, weight of a thousand seeds, emergence in sand, germination and vigor were determined by tetrazolium, electrical conductivity, accelerated aging, and visual 4 mechanical damage tests. The data were subjected to analysis of variance and the means were compared using the Tukey test, 5% probability, and simple correlation test between the means. There is a difference in tolerance to mechanical damage in seeds of cotton genotypes. The seeds of the TMG 31 B3RF cultivar are more sensitive to damage during harvest and processing. The seeds of the TMG44 B2RF cultivar are more tolerant to mechanical damage. The levels of mechanical damage and immature seeds for cotton crops negatively affect seed germination and vigor, as well as seedling quality.