PRE-GERMINATION TREATMENTS AIMED AT OVERCOMING DORMANCY IN MACAÚBA SEEDS

Macaúba (Acrocomia aculeata) has great potential for industrial application, however the dormancy of seeds of this species becomes limiting for the production of seedlings and greater use. The objective of this study was to evaluate different combinations of pre-germination treatments in order to overcome dormancy in macaúba seeds. The experiment was carried out at the Central Seed Research Laboratory of UFLA. The seeds were disinfested in sodium hypochlorite solution (1%) and submitted to 5 pre-germination treatments from combinations of immersion in distilled water for 10 days, with and without aeration, immersion in gibberellin without aeration for 24 hours (2000 mg ^L-1) and ultrasonic bath for 20 minutes, associated with removal of the operculum. The seeds were treated with fungicide and sown in trays with sand substrate and kept in a growth chamber at 30 ºC and photoperiod of 12/12h of light. Seedling emergence was computed from soil breakage and evaluation every two days, at 90 days after sowing the number of normal seedlings (CF%) and the speed of emergence were evaluated. The remaining seeds were submitted to the tetrazolium test to evaluate the viability of the embryos. A DIC design was used with 4 replicates of 20 seeds and the means were submitted to Tukey's test at 5% of significance