Forest species with hard seeds often cause important problems for nursery managers because their hard and water impermeable seed coats hinder and delay germination. For this reason, an experiment was carried out to determine methodologies for overcoming dormancy of catingueira seeds, under greenhouse conditions, in the Center for Agricultural Sciences, of the Federal University of Paraíba. The experiment was arranged in a complete randomized design, with four replicates of 25 seeds/treatment. Seeds were subjected to 12 treatments: control - intact seeds (T1), mechanical scarification using fine sandpaper nº. 80 (T2), coating cutting in the opposite side of micropylar region (T3), immersion in sulfuric acid (98%) for 6, 8 and 10 minutes (T4, T5 and T6, respectively), immersion in water at 60, 70 and 80ºC for one minute (T7, T8 and T9, respectively), immersion in water at room temperature for 24, 48 and 72 hours (T10, T11 and T12, respectively). The seeds were sown in plastic trays with sterilized humidified sand. Daily evaluations were carried out during 21 days observing characteristics of emergence percentage, emergence first count, emergence velocity index, height and dry matter weight of seedlings. The results demonstrated that germinative pre-treatments increased seed germination of catingueira seeds, and higher values were observed with manual scarification with sandpaper, immersion in concentrated sulfuric acid during eight and ten minutes and immersion in water at 80ºC for one minute were the most effective methods.
Catingueira; germination; vigor
