A Preliminary Study on the Germination of Eutycoma longifolia Jack (Tongkat Ali) Seeds

Eurycoma longifolia fruits are borne in large bunches consisting of 200-300fruits in each bunch. Even though trees produce abundant fruits during the peak fruiting season in September, yet the number of seedlings found growing in the forest floor is very low. Our results indicated that the seeds with hard endocarp sown in a 1:1 soil and sand mixture only start to germinate 43 days after sowing and continue to germinate over a period of 99 days. The soil and sand mixture (1:1) is equivalent to that of the forest sandy soil combination that was optimum for germination of Eurycoma longifolia seeds. The seeds with endocarp intact that are sown in jiffy germinated within 35-85 days. However, when the endocarp of seeds were removed, the seeds germinated within two weeks via in vitro culture using basic MS medium. The ripe seeds germinated better when saivn in the 1:1 soil and sand mixture than in jiffy pellets. But the unripe seeds with the endocarp removed seemed to germinate faster (CVG = 0.2053) when cultured in vitro in basic MS medium. All the seedlings were found to have the same growth pattern in terms of seedling height, number of leaves produced, and the stem diameter irrespective of germination methods over a period of 120 days.