Saturday, August 30, 2014

Germinating red custard apple seeds

On this summer we got some red custard apples from neighbor, which were big and extremely tasty. I was happy to see many seeds inside that and kept around 75 of them so that I can germinate and plant them in farm. By May middle, I planted them in plastic bags and started watering.

To my surprise, just only 2 had germinated. I thought hardy seeds may need some treatments and could find some information about hot water treatment, mechanical treatments etc on the web.

After rain had started, I was going under this tree since this is the walking path to my new house construction site. I could see many seedlings of red custard apple germinating under it. So probably these seeds underwent severe temperature stress in the open field and that is the natural condition for it to germinate. I had kept my seeds properly covered in the house and probably that does not work.

Recently while searching for Pueraria Javanica for using as a covrcrop, I found one website has given these seeds has to be treated with sulphuric acid, hot water or abrasion treatment. They also mentioned that seeds can be sown directly much prior to the rain and some percentage of the seeds will germinate. Nature has its own ways without special treatments....

http://www.appuagro.com/pueraria-phaseoloides-pueraria-javanica.html

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing. I threw some custard apple seeds last season and saw not signs of germination. Coul see many of them germinating this monsoon, after almost a year.

Nisha Srinivasan said...

Natural cycle for germination seems to be very long but natural selection is a big plus. We see many seeds that must have fallen in jan/feb germinate now.

Nandakumar said...

Some times natural cycles are mysterious

Raj said...

Try this: Take a disposable plastic tea cup ( 200 ML ) make holes at bottom and at sides. Fill it with fresh cow dung. Take a smaller cup, put 1 spoon of desi ghee and 1 spoon of pure desi honey or raw honey. Dip the seeds in this mixture for few minutes and after that, take the seeds and put it them it the first cup of cow dung. Keep the cow dung moist and then check the germination process. More info: http://www.rishikrishi.co.in/methodology.html

Healthytips said...

Thanks for sharing such beautiful information with us. I hope you will share some more information about apple custard seeds. Please keep sharing.
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