Clitoria (Clitoria ternatea L.)( crotalaria (Crotalaria juncea L.), siratro (Macrop-tilium atripurpureum [DC] Urb.), and desmanthus (Desmanthus virgatus (L.) Willd) have potential as leguminous green manures for rainfed lowland fields after the main rice crop in the Philippines. But their thick, hard seed coverings can cause problems for germination, To break seed dormancy, we subjected the seeds to a treatment of H_2SO_4 (commercial grade, 96%) for 15 min and to scrubbing for 15 min with sand, usingmild force. The experiment was replicated three times. Seed gennination was 98.0% forclitoria and 95.3% for siratro with the H_2SO_4 treatment, which was considerably higher than sand scrubbing and for the control (Table 1). In crotalaria, seed germination was 99.3% without any treatment, 97.3% with sand, and 89.3% with H_2SO_4, Desmanthus did not respond well to any of the treatments; the highest germination was 17.3% with sand scrubbing. The seeds did not survive the H_2SO_4 treatment.
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