A review on hardseedness and breaking dormancy in tropical forage legumes

摘要

Introduction of forage legumes into grassland is very beneficial to increase productivity and nutritive value of tropical grasses. However, their successful establishment is hampered by their high hard seed that impaired germination.This paper reviews some work concerning the hardseedness in tropical forage legumes and methods of their breaking dormancy. The hard seed in forage legumes was mostly found in herbaceous forage legumes. The type of seed dormancy was mostly physical dormancy with acid scarification was the most efficient treatment to break seed dormancy, followed by sandpapering and hot water. Some forage legume seeds showed physiological dormancy that can be broken by gibberellic acid and pre-chilling treatments.