On-Farm Seed Bio Priming: An Ecological & Sustainable Management Strategy

There is an urgent need to make food production more sustainable both in economic and environmental terms. Central to this is the need to reduce our reliance on inputs, while maintaining high levels of crop production and health. This can only be achieved through integrated and sustainable pest and disease management. One can addresses this need by investigating the role of seed priming on the induction of better plant performance against biotic and abiotic stress. On-farm seed bio priming is a low cost, simple and effective technology which speeds up germination, seedling emergence and improves seedling establishment & vigour (and ultimately yield) in a range of crops. Information emerging from around the world suggests that on-farm seed bio priming confers a wide range of benefits to crop plants, e.g. increased macro and micronutrient uptake, tolerance to drought and increased levels of resistance to diseases. Therefore, seed priming in combination with low dosage of microbial inoculants has been used to improve the plant performance, stabilize the efficacy of biological agents in the present set up of agriculture and reducing dependency on chemical inputs.