Factors Influencing Dormancy of Peanut Seeds

Abstract

Seeds of the Virginia botanical type (9) of peanut are dormant for a variable period after harvest. That is, they fail to germinate under conditions normally favorable for germination. Although dormancy is an inherent property of Virginia type peanut seeds (11, 24) comparatively little is known about the nature of the dormancy. Hull (10) found dormancy in peanut seeds to be a function of temperature and time and dormancy decreased as storage temperature increased from 30 to 400. In a previous paper (1) we reported that dormancy of variety Virginia Bunch 67 was broken 40 days after harvest if the pods were held at 300 and in 15 days if they were held at 400 and 500. When pods remained on plants in the ground or in field stacks, the dormant condition persisted considerably longer than 40 days. The objectives of this work were to measure the influence of seed coat, seed maturity, and various external factors on dormancy of freshly harvested and stack-cured peanut seeds.