author(s)
Anuradha and Ashish Tejasvi

abstract
Crop plants are negatively affected by heavy metals. Chromium is also a heavy metal that harms crops. This study aims to examine the effects of several chromium treatments on the germination and physiological processes of barley seedlings. A Petri culture experiment was performed to accomplish this purpose. In this experiment, sterilized barley seeds were sown in Petri dishes lined with Whatman No. 1 filter paper in triplicate. Filter papers were wetted with four concentrations of chromium (25, 50, 75, and 100 µM), and distilled water was used as a control (0 µM) treatment. The seedlings were measured on the fourteenth day. Resulted, various Cr treatments insignificantly decreased the germination percentage (GP) and speed of germination index (SGI). The number of lateral roots was reduced significantly by all Cr treatments. Treatments with Cr decreased the growth of the seedling and biomass (fresh and dry) of seedlings. Higher treatments (75 and 100 µM) resulted in significant decreases in root length, and the treatments with 50, 75, and 100 µM of Cr caused significant reductions in shoot length and total seedling length. All chromium treatments significantly decreased the fresh weight of root, shoot, and total seedlings. Higher Cr treatments (50, 75, and 100 µM) caused significant reductions in root dry weight. Several chromium treatments caused significant decreases in shoot and total seedling dry weight. Different Cr treatments diminished the seedling vigor index (SVI) and tolerance index (TI). By increasing the chromium treatments, the percentage difference from the control (% DFC) for germination and the percentage of phytotoxicity (PP) were found to increase.