Effect of seed priming on bitter gourd with different sources of phosphorus at various soaking durations. Pure and Applied Biology. Vol. 9, Issue 1, pp80-90. http://dx. Abstract The field experiment was conducted out on the effect of seed priming on bitter gourd cv, Jaunpuri with different sources; distilled water and 1 % of P using Di-ammonium phosphate, single supper phosphate and combination of SSP+Na2CO3 at different soaking durations (6, 12, 18, 24 hours) with control treatment at new

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... opmental farm (Horticulture section), The University of Agriculture Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during summer, 2016. The 20 treatments were three times replicated in Randomized Complete Block design with two factorial experiment i.e. sources and soaking durations. The result showed that seed priming significantly affected the emergence, vegetative and reproductive attributes of bitter gourd. The mean results showed that, higher percent of germination (78.14 %), survival percentage (83.57 %), days to early emergence (7.42), days to early flowering (38.67), primary branches palnt -1 (8.39), number of fruits plant -1 (13.97), fruit weight (101.36 g), fruit yield ha -1 (23.37 tones) and seed yield ha -1 (1091.62 kg) were observed While less days to emergence (7.42) was recorded when seeds were soaked in SSP + Na2CO3 solution. Maximum fruit length (14.84cm) and number of seed fruit -1 (22.83) were recorded when seeds were primed in DAP solution. SSP + Na2CO3 performed best in germination percentage. DAP also showed best performance in most of the parameters. While, no major changes were observed for emergence and yield contributing characters in distilled water treatment. Unprimed seed showed poor performance as compared to primed seeds. Hence, Seed priming in neutralized SSP for 24-hour soaking duration is recommended for improving germination and fruit yield.