Colchicum kotschyi Boiss grows wildly in Iran. Propagation of this perennial geophyte plant takes a long time either by corm or seed. Seeds usually have a deep dormancy and take more than a year to germinate. Therefore in order to find out an effective method for this fact, a factorial experiment based on completely randomized design with four replicates was conducted to investigate the effects of warm stratification (no stratification and 8 weeks, 25°C) and different chemical priming treatments. Priming was done by: H2SO4 (0 and 50%) and GA3 at (0, 250, 500 and 1000 ppm) and KNO3 at (1 and 2%). Seeds were all cultured in a Potato Dextrose Agar media (1%) and put in a dark position to germination. The results showed that warm stratification priming alone, had a germination percentage of 28.7%. No germination was observed in control, H2SO4 and KNO3 treatments alone. Warm stratification along with GA3 significantly increased the germination percentage. Maximum germination percentage (70%) was obtained in warm stratification and GA3 (1000 ppm). It seems that the problem to germination in most of the Colchicum kotschyi seeds is probably due to a kind of morphophysiological dormancy which is broken by warm stratification along with GA3.

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