నైరూప్య

Influence of seed treatment and growing media on six species of microgreens.

Arya KS*, Kutty MS

Microgreen cultivation is a novel idea to develop highly nutritious tender greens from seeds of vegetables or herbs with cotyledonary leaves and a pair of true leaves in a small area with limited supply of light and temperature. The study was conducted with the aim to standardize seed treatment and growing media for microgreen production. The observation recorded in standardization seed treatment experiment were germination percentage, seedling vigour, yield and microscopic observation for fungal growth. All the observations were noted to be on par while treating the seeds with chemicals compared to control. The observations noted in growing media standardization experiment were yield, seedling height, nutritional value of microgreens and microscopic observations on fungal growth. The yield was significantly higher for the microgreens grown in cocopeat media. Seedling height was noted to be on par when grown in different growing media except for ragi and mustard microgreens. Analysis on nutritional value of microgreens reveals that iron content was reported to be maximum in amaranthus microgreens, calcium content was recorded to be highest in ragi microgreens, beta carotene was noticed to be maximum in mustard microgreens, vitamin C was maximum in amaranthus micogreens, crude protein was recorded to be highest in wheat reported maximum fibre content and chlorophyll content was highest in green gram microgreens. Nitrates and oxalates were estimated only for amaranthus and mustard microgreens, it was also not influenced by the different growing media but among the species amaranthus reported highest oxalate content. No fungal contamination was recorded in freshly harvested microgreens. So, cocopeat was selected as the best growing media for microgreen production.