Commercial bioestimulants on the germination of grain sorghum seeds

Abstract

Among the various technologies that are applied in order to achieve the genetic potential of agricultural crops are the biostimulants that stand out for acting directly on germination and seedling development influencing agricultural productivity. In this sense, the present study aimed to compare the effect of the technical dosage of different commercial biostimulants on the germination of grain sorghum. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design, with 5 treatments (8,0 mL Awaken^® kg^-1 seed; 0,14 mL Stimulate^® L^-1; 0,014 mL Vorax^® L^-1; 6,0 mL Zc Full Patriot^® kg^-1 seed and control) and 4 repetitions of 50 seeds. The seeds were sown onto germitest paper roll and incubated in a germination chamber under at 25ºC for 10 days. The evaluated characters were first germination count, germination speed index, germination percentage, seedling length and fresh and dried biomass of seedlings. There were no significant differences for the first germination count, for the fresh biomass and germination speed index. All the biostimulants positively influenced the seedling length in relation to the control and the highest values were given by Vorax^® and Zc Full Patriot^®.  With the exception of Awaken^®, which presented the lowest value, all treatments had high germination percentages. Stimulate® and Awaken® conferred greater accumulation of dry biomass, to the detriment of Vorax® and Zc Full Patriot^®. It is concluded that the Awaken^® dosage negatively affected most of the characters, while the applied Stimulate^® dosage resulted in good performance in all of the characters.