Objectives Chemical seed priming treatment is an effective approach to facilitate the rapid and uniform field emergence of seedlings. Seeking for environmentally friendly and economically feasible chemicals for seed priming application affords an alternative way for higher crop yields.

Methods Six C₂-C₄ organic acids and alcohols including acetate, propionate, butyrate, ethanol, propanol and butanol were used to treat the seeds of corn, green pea and wheat. The used treatment concentrations for acetate, propionate, butyrate were 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 mg/L, and those for ethanol, propanol and butanol were 3, 5, 8, 10 and 13 mg/L. The tested seeds were all soaked in the solutions for 24 h at 25℃, then placed at 25℃ under moisture of 80% for germination. The seed germination rate were investigated at the fivth day, and the lenghth of sprouts and roots, and the biomass of seedlings were measured after two weeks of the germination. and development are evaluated. Grey relational analysis is employed to integrate the germination percentage, shoot length, root length and seedling weight for a comprehensive assessment of the priming chemicals.

Results The 20 mg/L acetate was proved optimal for the seeds of corn, its priming grade was 0.797, higher than that of the 40 mg/L of glycine (0.701); The propionate of 40 mg/L obtained the same priming grade of 0.730 with glycine on green pea seeds, which was the highest priming grade that glycine could produced on green pea seeds, and the propionate of 40 mg/L also produced the highest priming grade of 0.799 on wheat, which was better than the best grade of 0.699 obtained by the 30 mg/L glycine.

Conclusions This work demonstrates the low molecular organic acids and alcohols are available to be used as seed priming chemicals. Among the tested chemicals, 40 mg/L of acetate and 40 mg/L of propionate performs best on corn seeds and wheat and green pea seeds respectively.