Comparative Study of Induced-stress Methods on Seedling Vigour and Storability Potential of Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) verdc.) Genotypes

Post-harvest pests have been a menace that affects agricultural productions across the world, causing significant yield losses, aggravating food insecurity especially in developing countries like Nigeria. This study was carried out to evaluate seedling vigour and storability potential in 15 Bambara groundnut genotypes using artificial ageing and methanol test. The seeds were aged artificially at 450C and 99% relative humidity for 48 hours and methanol stress test. In methanol test, seeds were placed in a moist chamber at room temperature for 2 days and afterward soaked in 20% aqueous solutions of methanol for two hours followed by soaking in distilled water for 5 minutes. The aged seeds were then evaluated following seed testing traits: rate of seed germination, seed germination, seedling fresh weight, seedling dry weight, seedling length and seedling vigour index. The experiment was carried out in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) in three replicates. Methanol ageing method gave the best performance in all the, seed quality attributes. The results showed that the various genotype of Bambara groundnut had different qualities after being different ageing treatments. Genotypes TVSU-633, TVSU-455 and TVSU-438 aged using accelerated and methanol and had better adaptive mechanisms to deal with the physiological damages induced by short-term ageing treatments when compared to the other genotypes. This implies that the afore-mentioned genotypes can with-stand stress and highly storable, thus recommended for use by seed companies, crop breeders and Bambara groundnut improvement programme. Accelerated and methanol can therefore, be used to predict the storability of bambara groundnut seeds.