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ABSTRACT
The study was carried out to investigate the effect of seed size on the germination and growth of Gmelina arborea.Roxb. It was conducted in the Nursery of the Department of Forest Resources and Wildlife Management, University of Benin. The experimental design used in this study was Completely Randomized Design (CRD). The treatments used for the study were; large seed size (1.095g), medium seed size (0.883g) and small seed size ( 0.635g). The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency and percentage, tables, graph and inferential statistics using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Germination started ten (10) days after sowing for large (T1) and medium (T2) seed size treatments while for small seed size treatment (T3) it started thirteen (13) days after sowing. Period of germination for T1 was seventeen (17) days, T2 was fifteen (15) days and nineteen (19) days for T3. Small seeds had the highest germination percentage (28.57%) compared to large and medium seeds (18.57%). At the termination of growth study at Week 7, seedlings had a mean height of 7.81 ± 4.26cm T1, T2 7.30 ± 3.43cm and T3 10.33 ± 3.95cm, seedling collar girth recorded under each treatment ranges from 1.84 ± 0.38 mm to 2.08 ± 0.53 mm, mean number of leaves 5.8 ± 2.2 for T1, 5.73 ± 1.85 for T2, and 7 ± 2.12 for T3. , mean fresh biomass 1.998 ± 0.76g (T1), 1.432 ± 0.30g (T2), 2.276 ± 0.44g (T3), mean dried biomass ranges from 0.692 ± 0.09g to 0.97 ± 0.23g. The results revealed that the smaller seed size had the highest germination percentage (28.57%) and also there was no significant difference in the growth parameters between seed sizes. In the study it was observed that small seed size performed numerically better compared to the other seed sizes.
