Perform Nursery Operations

1. What are the common nursery tools and specific uses?

2. What are the factors to be considered in site selection for the nursery shed?

SITE SELECTION

The selection of the area for a nursery is critical and it should be sited as centrally as possible to
the field(s) to be planted. In addition, the following should also be considered:

Topography (Terrain)

The selected area should be flat to gently undulating with slopes between 0 and 30 and
preferably, with a reliable/permanent source of water supply for irrigation purpose.

Water Supply

Water requirements (quality and quantity) must be determined prior to starting site
preparation. The easiest source of water is where there is a large natural pond or lake whereby
all that is required is to place an intake pipe to connect with a pump unit. A back-up system
should be considered, particularly in isolated areas or areas of lower or unreliable rainfall.

Drainage

The site chosen should not be prone to flooding, which will damage seedlings and buildings
(stores).

Area

To achieve good growing conditions with minimal risk of etiolation, a main nursery planting
density of 13,800 polybags per ha with 0.91m(3ft) x 0.91m(3ft) D planting is recommended
excluding allowance for accessibility. The spacing should be increased by another 0.15m (0.5ft) if
the seedlings are anticipated to be kept in the nursery for longer than 12 months.

Accessibility and Nursery Roads

Roads within the nursery and their alignments will need to be carefully planned and laid out
depending on the placement distance of the polybags and the type of irrigation to be utilised.
Access roads to the nursery should be sufficiently wide to allow vehicles to manoeuvre during
peak planting periods to facilitate supervision and movement of materials.

SITE PREPARATION

The preparation of the area for a nursery is important to allow optimum seedling growth,
maintenance of nursery site, unimpeded access and to provide hygienic conditions for plant
growth. Four main activities are involved in preparing a site for nursery, namely nursery design,
clearing, fencing and lining.

Nursery Design

A well-designed nursery allows for access of many vehicles during evacuation of seedlings for
field planting especially for large-scale plantings. This objective can be achieved through the
drawing up of a plan to show all paths, roads and irrigation points. An example is shown in
Figure 1.
Clearing

With the boundaries determined, felling and clearing should be carried out at least 2 months
before the arrival of the seeds. Once clearing is completed, proceed to fence the area, fill the
polybags and install the irrigation system.

Fencing

The major types of fences utilised for nurseries are the conventional barbed wire fence and the
electric fence.

The Conventional Fence

The specifications for the conventional fence depend on the species of animals that it is required
to keep out. For example, a four-strand barbed wire fence, with wires spaced at 0.3, 0.6, 0.9 and
1.2 m from ground should be adequate to control cattle and goats.

Electric Fencing

Where there is threat of wild mammalian pests, an electrical fence is possibly the best form of
defence. Wires of 250-300 kg breaking strain have been found to be the most suitable. The
heights at which the electrified wires are placed above ground level are critical, being
dependent on the mammalian pests to be kept out, e.g. 10 cm to repel porcupines.

Lining

Lining is carried out to space the polybags evenly in the nursery, so that seedlings have good and
uniform access to sunlight and to achieve the most cost effective irrigation system .

Polybags are lined at 0.91m (3 ft) x 0.91m (3 ft) triangular spacing to give each seedling the
optimum growth space. All seedling rows must be straight along the axis at 60o to each other
and parallel to irrigation lines.
 In the Sumisansui irrigation system, MK II tubes are laid down between the polybags at every 4
rows, a 1 m wide path is provided at every 8 rows for easy access. When the seedlings are about
7 – 8 months old, additional MK II tubes are added between the existing MK II tubes to give a
final layout of 1 tube for every 2-seedling row. This is illustrated in Figure 2.

3. What are the characteristics of good quality seeds?

4. Give techniques in breaking seed dormancy?

Methods of Breaking Seed Dormancy

Various methods have been used by seed scientist and technologists to break the dormancy of
seed.

Simple and widely used methods are

A. Scarification:

Any treatment i.e. physical or chemical that weakness the seed coat, is known as scarification.
 Scarification method is applied, when dormancy is imposed by hard seen coat e. g. in legumes-
cajanus cajan, (tur), gram etc.

In this method there are various way to break hard seed coat such as:

Seeds are either rubbed on a sand paper manually. At the time of rubbing care should be taken
that not to damage the axis of the seed e.g. Green gram & subabool.

When seed coat is too hard i.e. of woody nature, the seed coat has to be removing completely
by breaking it. E.g. Rubber (Havea app) seed India teak wood seed.

Soaking treatment: Soaking hard seed coat in concentrated or diluted solution of sulphuric acid
for 1 to 60 minutes, it remove seed coat impermeability. E. g. cotton seeds, India teak wood
seeds etc.

B. Temperature Treatments:

When the dormancy is due to embryo factor i.e. the seed is incubating at low temp. (0- 5o C)
over a substratum for 3 to 10 days placing it at optimum temp. Required for germination. E.g.
mustard. – (Brassica campestrits)

Some seeds required a brief period of incubation (from a few hours to one to five days) at 40 to
50 oC before germinating at required temp. ( in this method care should be taken that moisture
content of the seed is not more than 15% e.g. paddy (Oryza Sativa)

Hot water treatment is also an effective method of breaking hard- seed ness in legumes. In this
method the seeds are soaked in water at 80oC temp. For 1 – 5 minutes (depending up on the
type of seed) before putting for germination.

C. Light Treatments:

Same seeds do not germinate in dark thus it provides continuous or periodic exposure of light is
essential e. g. Lettuce (Lactuca Sativa) required red light (660nm) or white light is essential for
germination to occur.

D. Treatments with growth regulators & other Chemicals:

Endogenous dormancy may be due to presence of germination inhibitors. Application of low

level of growth regulators (i.e. Gibberellins, Cytokinins and Ethylene etc) may break the seed
dormancy.

Most widely used growth regulators are gibberellins and kinetics e.g. seeds of sorghum crop
presoaking seed treatment with GA3 at the conc. Of 100 ppm have been used for breaking seed
dormancy

Among other chemicals potassium nitrate (0.2%) and thio – urea (0.5 to 3%) are widely used for
breaking seed dormancy in oat (Avena Sativa), barley (Hordeum vulgare), tomato (Lycopersicon
spp).

(For prepare 100 ppm solution of GA3, weigh 100 mg of GA3 & dissolve in a few drops of alcohol
and make up the final volume (1000 ml) by adding distilled water).

(50 ppm kinetin 5 mg dissolved in few drops of alkaline made with sodium hydroxide and makes
the final volume 100ml it gives to final conc. Of 50 ppm)
5. What is the importance of germination test?
What is a germination test?
seed germinationA germination test determines the percentage of seeds that are alive in any
seed lot. The level of germination in association with seed vigor provides a very good estimate
of the potential field performance. While the speed of germination varies slightly across
varieties, seeds should absorb moisture within two days and produce a root and the first leaf
within four days. At this point, the seed is considered to have germinated.

Why is measuring germination important?

A germination test is often the only test a farmer can conduct on the seed to determine if it is
suitable for planting. When seed is stored in traditional open systems, the germination rate of
most rice seed begins to deteriorate rapidly after six months. Also, many varieties have a
dormancy period immediately after harvest that can last for 1−2 months. By knowing the
germination rate, farmers can adjust their planting rates to attain the desired plant population
in the field.

How to measure germination

Sampling

To obtain a random sample for testing, it is always best to take samples from different parts of
the bag or container. If the seed to be tested is contained in more than one bag, a sample must
be taken from several bags. A good rule of thumb in determining how many bags to sample is to
take samples from a number of bags that represents the square root of the lot size. For
example, if the lot contains nine bags, then sample at least three bags. If the lot contains 100
bags, then get sample from at least 10 bags.

Equipment

To conduct this test, you will need the following:

Waterproof tray. A flat-sided water bottle cut in half-lengthwise makes a good tray.
Water-absorbent material. Tissues or cotton wool are ideal.
Seeds
Water supply
Procedure

Place the water-absorbent material inside the waterproof tray.

Take random samples from each seed lot and mix those in a container
Take at least three seed samples from the mixed grain.
Count out 100 seeds from each sample and place on absorbent material inside the tray.
Carefully saturate the absorbent material
For each of 10 days, check to see that the absorbent material remains moist and record the
number of germinated seeds.
Compute germination test after five days, and another after ten days.
The rate of germination is an indicator of vigor. Rapid seed germination increases the chance of
the seed establishing in the field.

Calculating the germination rate

Germination rate is the average number of seeds that germinate over the 5- and 10- day
periods.

For example, If 86 seeds germinated in a tray of 100 seeds after 10 days, then
6. Out of 100 seeds, only 65 germinated. what is the percentage of germination?

7. Give characteristics of good growing medium.

While there are a number of laboratory tests for the physical characterization of growing media,
the three most familiar measurements are bulk density (weight per volume), water holding
capacity and air porosity.

Water holding capacity is the volume percentage of water retained after a saturated growing
medium is allowed to drain.

Air porosity is a measurement of the volume of pore space occupied by air after a saturated
growing medium is allowed to drain. For the most part, packaged growing media products have
a low bulk density, since the majority are made with a base of sphagnum peat moss and have a
higher water holding capacity. Bark-based media are heavyweight products that are suitable
when high drainage and container stability are required. Both products typically have good air
porosity which is in a range of 10% – 18% by volume for most growing media.