Vigna radiata (green gram) are staple food in India. The imbibition of the seed is never correlated with germination and vigour of the seeds. In the present experiment we imbibed the seed in 100 ml sterile distilled water for 0 to 24h. The imbibed seeds were allowed to germinate and data were recorded with respect to normal and abnormal germination, fungal infection, non-germinated seed and mean plant length after 7 day of sowing. The 8h period imbibition is found to be best with respect to vigour. The water imbibed after imbibition for a period of 8h was 0.912±0.018 g/g dry weight seed. The normal germination (%), abnormal germination (%), non-germinated (%) and plant length for the same were 61.001.15, 121.15, 23.671.76, 14.30.3 cm respectively.

Keywords: Vigna Radiata; Imbibition; Germination; Vigour; Seed.