Evaluación de escarificación química de semillas de mora (Rubus glaucus)

Abstract

The blackberry (Rubus glaucus) belonging to the Rosaceae family is recognised as one of the genera with the largest number of species in the Plantae kingdom, including approximately 300 species, which are distributed throughout the world, except in desert areas. This fruit belongs to the berry group, which is rich in vitamin C and antioxidants. Scarification is a technique which consists of subjecting the seed to certain physical, mechanical and chemical parameters in order to shorten the dormancy of the seeds. This research was carried out in the Cevallos canton on the premises of the Technical University of Ambato, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, with the aim of "Evaluating the chemical scarification of blackberry (Rubus glaucus) seeds. For this research a randomised complete block design was used with five treatments and three replications, having as study factors the chemical scarification based on H2SO4 at 80% and 85% and NaClO at 7.25% and 5.25, by means of an analysis of variance compared by the Tukey test of means (P< 0.05) and an ADEVA. The results showed that for the variables analysed such as germination percentage, plant height and number of leaves evaluated at 60, 70 and 80 days, the best treatment was T1 (NaClO 5.25%); however, for the variable number of leaves at 80 days, T2 (NaClO 7.25%) was higher. We can conclude that T1 was the best treatment, obtaining 33% germination. This may be due to the fact that blackberry seed has exogenous dormancy, which does not allow easy germination, thus obtaining germination percentages of less than 50%.