Efeitos do tamanho de vagens na germinação e vigor de sementes de pau ferro (Caesalpinia ferrea Mart.)

Abstract

The Caesalpinia ferrea Mart, known as jucá or pau-ferro, is used in folk medicine for its therapeutic properties in the treatment of wounds, bruises, asthma, and chronic cough. In recent years, there has been a great advance in the field of study on seed analysis of native species. However, it is still incipient for several forest species, mainly regarding the basic characteristics of the seeds, the light effect and the depth in the germination process. The experiments were carried out in the Laboratory of Seed Analysis at the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco - Academic Unity of Garanhuns (UFRPE - UAG), in order to verify the influence of the different sizes of fruits on the germination, vigor and sowing depth of Caesalpinia ferrea. The fruits were harvested in the municipality of Paranatama - PE and classified into two lots: batch 1 (Large fruits) and batch 2 (Small fruits). After the harvest, fruit and seed biometry, water content, thousand seed weight, electrical conductivity, ethereal extract, germination and light test, and depth test were performed. For the germination and luminosity test, 200 seeds were used, consisting of four replicates of 50 seeds for each batch in the presence and absence of light, in which were determined the percentage of germination, the length of the shoot and root of seedlings, and the total dry mass of normal seedlings. For the depth test, the experiment was consisted of 4 treatments (0.0, 2.0, 4.0 and 6.0 cm) with 4 replicates of 10 seeds for each batch. The differences verified for the biometry of fruits and seeds have as main cause the genetic variability of the matrices. Seeds behaved as neutral photoblastic for the two lots under study, with interactions between seed size and germination speed index, and root length and total dry mass. The best seeding depth for seeds from large fruits was 3.52 cm, and 3.61 cm for small fruits.