Carrageenan Priming Enhances Seed Quality, While Thieves Essential Oil Restricts in Dark-colored Tapilan (Vigna umbellata): Future Prospects

Awarded as Best Paper (to be published in a Scopus-indexed journal, HAYATI Journal of Biosciences) and Best Presenter

Oral Presentation. 4th International Conference on Research and Development. Bogor, Indonesia. November 16-17, 2024

Tapilan (Vigna umbellata) is an underutilized and understudied crop with enormous potential in food and feed production. The absence of a breeding program for tapilan led to variability of seed quality. This study addresses the low seed vigor of dark-colored tapilan seeds by priming accessions from Benguet, La Union, and South Cotabato for four hours with carrageenan and thieves essential oil. Carrageenan demonstrated a germination percentage at 80.00%, which is 9.59% increase from the initial germination rate of 73%. However, carrageenan and distilled water (-) were comparable in improving the seed quality parameters such as germination rate, speed of germination, seedling length, and vigor index. Tapilan seeds from both treatments also have the fastest ontogenetic development at BBCH 10 after seven days. In contrast, thieves essential oil incurred a 64.99% decrease in germination and negatively affected the seed quality parameters of tapilan, though it was able to protect the seeds from molds. All things considered, this study reveals significant research gaps that can be explored in order to advance research on seed priming using carrageenan and essential oils. These include finding the best concentration of carrageenan and thieves essential oil to enhance seed quality, testing essential oils for seed priming of crops that will be grown hydroponically, and conducting morpho-physiological observations up to the later stages of plant development.

Keywords. carrageenan, seed priming, seed quality, thieves essential oil, Vigna umbellata