Caracterização morfofisiológica de frutos e sementes de Hymenaea sp

Abstract

The increased demand for forest species seedlings for urban afforestation, recovery of degraded areas and agroforestry systems has required knowledge of genetic variability, physical and physiological quality of seeds from different parent plants, since more vigorous seeds will produce better quality seedlings. Therefore, this work aimed to evaluate the physical characteristics of fruits and seeds, as well as the physiological quality of seeds of 80 mother plants of Hymenaea sp. The research was carried out at the Seed Analysis Laboratory of the Department of Phytotechnics and Environmental Sciences, at the Agricultural Sciences Center, at the Federal University of Paraíba. In the research, 80 mother plants were used, located in the municipality of Areia-PB, whose physical analyzes were: length, width, thickness and weight of fruits and seeds, as well as the number of seeds per fruit. The physiological evaluations were: first emergence count, emergence percentage, speed index and mean emergence time, percentage of abnormal seedlings, length and dry mass of shoots and root system. The physical data were analyzed using univariate statistics, which included measurements of position (minimum and maximum values, and average) and dispersion (coefficients of variation, asymmetry and kurtosis), while for physiological quality the experimental design used was the completely randomized and subjected to analysis of variance, the grouping of means was performed by the Scott-Knott test at 5% probability, when there was significance in the F test. The length, width, thickness and weight of the fruits varied from 27, 00 to 186.00 mm, 8.00 to 94.00 mm, 8.20 to 66.32 mm and 3.72 to 222.92 g, respectively, in which the fruits of matrices 88 and 117 had larger fruits . The number of seeds per fruit was from 0 to 15, while for the seeds the variation was from 10.03 to 38.00 mm, 5.30 to 32.39 mm, 1.84 to 35.36 mm and 0.52 to 9.99 g for length, width, thickness and weight, respectively. The highest percentages and emergence speed index were verified in seeds of the mother plants 86, 145, 157, 171, 184 and 187. Regarding the average time of emergence, it was observed that the seeds of the mother plants 9, 13, 14, 15, 22, 92, 120 and 192 needed a longer time to emerge (28.14-27.00 days). The seeds of the parent plants 6, 8, 17, 30, 114,125 and 134 were the ones that originated the smallest number of abnormal seedlings. For the shoot length, the seeds of the mother plants 8,86, 88, 117 and 152 produced seedlings with greater length, while for the root length, the seedlings originated from the seeds of the mother plants 10, 11, 12, 14, 21, 24, 73 and 152 achieved greater results. With regard to shoot dry mass, it was found that the seeds of parent plants 8, 17, 88, 114, 115 and 152 had better development. Regarding the variable dry mass of roots, the matrix plant 187 originated seedlings with the highest values. In the natural population of parent plants of Hymenaea sp., from Areia-PB, there is divergence in relation to the phenotypic characteristics of fruits and seeds, with emphasis on fruit weight and number of seeds per fruit. In the physiological quality of seeds of 80 mother plants of Hymenaea sp. there is a highlight in the matrices 187, 86, 171, 184, 157, 145 and 15 and in the matrix 9 there are seeds with viviparity