Commiphora wightii (Arnott) is a critically endangered, dioecious plant and commonly known as Guggal. It has tremendous pharmaceutical and medicinal importance. The sex ratio is extremely skewed towards female plants and male plants are extremely rare. Slow growth, poor seed germination and extremely poor regeneration are some of the contributing factors causing decline in its population. The objective of the present work was to study the seed characters in different genotypes to establish the relationship amongst seed germination, seed colour and seed weight. Guggal plants produce seeds throughout the year but seed yield and viability are higher for seeds produced in winter. Total 1643 mature seeds were collected from nine genotypes (C1, C2, C3, P1, P2, P3, P4, P6 and P9) from Deesa (Gujarat, India) in November-December, 2017. The pooled seed weight data showed that seed weight of black seeds (41.89 gm) was higher than that of brown (30.57 gm) and white seeds (23.34 gm). Seed germination was also higher in black seeds (17.2%) than in brown seeds (5.5%) whereas white seeds failed to germinate. A significant positive correlation was also observed between seed germination and seed weight. The study on percentage of different seed lobes for each genotype revealed that four lobed seeds were found only in C2 (8.9%) and C3 (3.2%), whereas three lobed seeds were produced by C2 (1.1%), C3 (2.3%) and P9 (1.2%). Other six genotypes produced 100% two lobed seeds. The above results indicated that the seed colour and seed weight influence the seed viability as well as germination. Superior genotypes can be selected on the basis of the seed quality for establishing seed orchard and plantations as conservation strategy.
Dear researchers! I hope you have some time to discuss the following:
1. I am very interested to learn more about AFRI polyhouse conditions (309.05±273.27 K temperature and 53.8±0.24% humidity). How and with what device did You manage to keep the temperature accurate to hundredths of a Kelvin and the humidity accurate to tenths of a percent? Why did you need to freeze the seeds and then heat them (309.05±273.27)?
2. Please tell us more about the separation of seeds by color. Which method (or maybe device) You used.
3. What statistical criterion did you use when comparing the average values for the seed mass parameter between seeds of different colors? How reliable are the differences?
Best regards,
Arthur Novikov.
1. We recorded the AFRI polyhouse Temperature and humidity by using a Data logger. The temperature was recorded in º C unit and then converted in Kelvin (SI unit) as asked by proceeding editors. After simple analysis of temperature data recorded by logger, the average temperature of this data set was 35.9˚C with 10.15 SD. While converting it into a kelvin unit I mistakenly converted both mean and SD into Kelvin which is given in paper (309.05±273.27 K). Now I have converted all data set into kelvin and recalculated the mean and SD which came out to be 309.03 ± 10.15 K. I am really thankful to you for asking this question and realizing my mistake. Now I will be requesting the editorial board to please re-upload my paper with the correct average temperature and SD or publish a erratum on this web page /site.
2. We separated the seeds into three categories on colour criteria (a) Black seeds- the complete black seed coat and only dark brown line in between two lobes , (b) White seeds- complete white or creamish colour seeds, (c) Brown seeds (middle category) - black spots on white or creamish seed coat seeds.
3. After separating the seeds into three categories on the basis of above colour criteria, we weighed each seed and calculated the average seed weight and SD for each class.
