| Summary: | This study was conducted at School of Sustainable Agriculture, Universiti Malaysia Sabah Sandakan from July 2013 to October 2013 to determine the effect of different
thicknesses of polyethylene (PE) as packaging material on seed viability of paddy variety TQR-8 under ambient condition. The objectives of the study were to investigate the effect of different thicknesses of polyethylene as the packaging material on the seed viability of paddy seed variety TQR-8 under ambient condition and also to determine the most suitable thickness of polyethylene material for seed packaging of paddy under ambient condition. The paddy seeds were packed with polyethylene packaging material with the thicknesses of 0.03 mm (API), 0.035 mm (AP2), 0.04 mm
(AP3) and 0.06 mm (AP4). The paddy seeds packed with PE packaging material were stored under ambient condition (30-35°C, RH 70-90%) while the paddy seeds packed
with polypropylene (the packaging material used by Department of Agriculture) were
stored in the cold room condition (5-100 C, RH 50-60%) as the control treatment. The experiment was designed in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three
replicates for each treatment. For the period of two months, the germination test was carried out with two weeks interval. Parameters examined in this study were moisture
content (%), percentage of germination (%), number of seedlings with radide, number of seedlings with plumule, number of normal seedlings, number of abnormal seedlings,
number of seedlings with leaf, height of seedlings (cm), length of root (cm) and number of dead seeds. The result obtained was analyzed into a one-way analysis of
variance (ANOVA). At the end of 8th week, the control treatment (85.67%) and API (47.25%) are seen to have higher percentage of germination compared to AP2 (26.67%), AP3 (21.83%) and AP4 (11.50%). After two months of storage, PE with thickness 0.03 mm has recorded the highest percentage of germination (47.25%), highest percentage of seedlings with radicle (47.25%), plumule (43.83%), leaf (34.67%) and normal (32.83%) seedlings as compared to the other thicknesses of PE. lt also produced the second tallest seedlings (5.40 cm) and longest root (5.68 cm) after the control treatment. From the findings of this study, none of the thickness of polyethylene packaging material is suitable for storing paddy seeds variety TQR-8 under ambient condition for two months period because the germination percentage was below 50%. However, the percentage of germination of paddy seed variety TQR-8 packed with PE with thickness of 0.03 mm was found to be good for shorter period of storage. On Week 2, paddy seeds packed with PE with thickness 0.03 mm recorded 71.67% of germination while on Week 4, it recorded 60.67% of germination. On Week
6, the percentage of germination decreased to a percentage lower than 50%. Therefore, the paddy seeds could be packed with PE with thickness of 0.03 mm when storing seeds under ambient condition for not more than one month of storage period. On the other hand, further study on a packaging material which can maintain low temperature inside the particular packaging material could be carried out.
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