The study was made on the role of ozone (O<sub>3</sub>) gas treatment on seeds of Lycopersicon esculentum cv. PKM1 (tomato) to release dormancy in advance. The experimental conditions followed a complete factorial design with 3 independent factors, i.e. A faster start of germination in T<sub>2</sub> treatment (98% - 99%) was observed than in other treatments (T<sub>1</sub>, T<sub>3</sub> and T<sub>4</sub>) compared to control seeds by measuring seedling growth rate on 5<sup>th</sup> day after treatment. Never the less a too long and high concentration of O3 treatment seemed to be penalizing on germination rate whereas low O<sub>3</sub> concentration (T<sub>2</sub>) for a moderate time interval (20 min) seemed to be most beneficial. The treated seeds were stored, checked 1, 3, 6 months later and found that, the seeds have retained their accelerated germination efficiency. In particular 1T<sub>2</sub> (1 month storage), 3T<sub>2</sub> (3 month storage) had maximum germination rate among all the stored treated seeds, but 6T<sub>2</sub> (6 month storage) didn’t show sustained germination acceleration efficiency. Therefore it was found that when time prolongs, O<sub>3</sub> treatment loss its effect steadily and the germination efficiency of all the treatments are more or less same at six months after treatment. It is hypothesized that the application of O<sub>3</sub> acts as an important phenomenon in accelerating seed germination by breaking the dormancy in advance which is associated with reduced level of ABA in O<sub>3</sub> treated seeds.
KeywordsAbscissic AcidGerminationOzoneTomato Seed
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