Application of doses of gibberellic acid (ga3) as a pre-germination treatment in Hymenaea Courbaril seeds

Abstract

The Hymenaea courbaril is a species of the Fabaceae family, found from the Amazon forest to the semideciduous forest in Brazil. With various uses in the wood, food and cosmetics industry, in addition to being used for medicinal purposes and as a potential species for restoration of degraded areas. However, the seminal production of seedlings of the species presents difficulties due to the presence of dormancy in the seeds, being necessary effective methods that help in seed germination and seedling vigor in the field. Thus, the objective of this experiment was to evaluate the effect of seed scarification combined with the application of gibberellic acid (GA3) as a pre-germinative treatment on Hymenaea courbaril seeds. The design used was completely randomized, with the seeds all being scarified and immersed for 24 hours in different concentrations of gibberellic acid (0, 300, 600, 900) with five replications of 25 seeds, using sand and tanned sawdust as substrate (1: 1 v/v). Analysis of variance and regression of the results were performed, and the means of treatments were compared by Tukey's test at a 5% probability level (p<0.05). The application of gibberellic acid (GA3) as a pre-germinative treatment in Hymenaea courbaril seeds was not significant for the analyzed germinative variables, except for the emergence speed index (IVE) in which there was an increase of 0.32 in relation to control, with the dosage of 900 ppm. The scarification with emery is the most efficient method to break seed dormancy and seminal production of seedlings of the species.