An experiment was conducted to study seed dormancy(hardseedness) in seventeen genetic lines and three commercial cultivars ofpigeon pea. The seeds were hand-harvested, hand-shelled, and stored in paperbags in a chamber with 10°C and 25% air relative humidity. Four replicationsof fifty-seed samples were put to germinate in moist paper rolls at 30ºC, afterone, two, three, four, five, nine, twelve and fifteen months of storage. Nohard seeds were observed among eight lines and the three commercial cultivars.Among these lines, g58-95 had low storage potential, quickly losing germinationpercentage. Line g184-97 presented low percentage of hard seeds, lines g3-94,g6-95 and g124-95 kept the initial percentage, g101-97, g127-97, g154-95 andg167-97 had the percentage of hard seeds increased from one to nine months ofstorage, and percentage of hard seeds of line g27-94, constantly decreased.It was concluded that pigeon pea genotypes vary amply among themselves in termsof hard seed production potential and that satisfactory germination of its seedlots may require artificial chemical or mechanical scarification.
