International Journal of Environmental & Agriculture Research (IJOEAR) ISSN:[2454-1850] [Vol-9, Issue-4, April- 2023] Page | 82 Improvement of Sugarcane Seeds Drought Stress Tolerance by Invigoration using of Trichoderma as Bio-Primer Danie Indra Yama 1* , Muhammad Rizal 2 , Muhammad Ali 3 Department of Agricultural Technology, Pontianak State Polytechnic, Indonesia *Corresponding Author Abstract— Trichoderma used in this study resulted in a density of 1.4 x 10 -9 with their morphology had septate mycelium, rounded or oval conidia shape and attached to each other, has a bright green color and branched conidiophores. The biopriming treatment had a significant effect on germination, germination rate, vigor index and total chlorophyll content of sugarcane that was stressed by drought. Soaking for a long time (24 hours) caused a decrease in the percentage of germination in sugarcane seeds by 12.69%, the vigor index of 1.06 and short immersion also caused a decrease in the percentage of germination by 10.61% and a decrease in the average vigor index by 21.74. The 12-hour soaking treatment was a better treatment than control to increasing germination rates under drought stress, it was 12.5% specifically and fast germination rate of 3.76 days. Sugarcane germination rates was reduced if the soaking process is carried out in brief time and vice versa. The highest vigor index value was produced by biopriming treatment for 12 hours, which was 81.74. Biopriming treatment using secondary metabolites of Trichoderma was increasing the total chlorophyll content in sugarcane germination by 0.22 g/ml compared to without soaking treatment. Keywords— Fungi; Germination; Priming. I. INTRODUCTION Sugarcane growth consists of germination, budding, vegetative growth, and maturity phases. Determination of the next phase is determined by the germination phase which is influenced by seed quality, glucose, nitrogen, water, seed treatment [1]. The problem in the field, especially in West Borneo, availability of superior sugarcane planting material was limited and forcing farmers to buy seeds from overseas. As that result, the seeds fall on deteriorate and the quality of the seeds decreases due to the delivery process which takes several days. In the shipping process, especially in the tropics, temperature fluctuations will occur, with the recalcitrant nature of sugarcane seeds, the seeds cannot withstand storage conditions at 10°C and above 35°C so they will be through chilling injury and reduce their viability [2]. Seeds that have low quality can reduce their vigor and viability, which in turn reduces plant productivity. In West Borneo during the long dry season experienced drought conditions so that water supply was limited. Though sugarcane seeds require a lot of water, one of which is during the germination phase. Drought stress in the germination phase affects the quality, growth in the next phase. Each sugarcane clone produce a different expression in response to drought stress. Research by [3] showed that the PS881 clone was able to adapt to conditions drought stress in the early growth phase in unfavorable seed conditions experiencing storage. The main key in increasing crop production is healthy seeds that have viability and vigor of more than 85%. According to [4] that the highest growth and yield was produced by sugarcane seeds that were not stored. The existence of the above problems, one of the strategies to solve them can be through biopriming techniques using biological agents Trichoderma spp by utilizing the secondary metabolites produced. This technique is often used in food crops, but not many have applied this technique to plantation seeds, especially sugarcane. Biopriming is the immersion of seeds in a suspension of biological agents so as to activate signals to maintain stress and increase vigor [5]. Trichoderma was also able to increase resistance to abiotic stresses, one of which is drought, nutrient absorption, and increasing root growth and development. Trichoderma produces phytohormones such as Indole Acetic Acid (IAA) which is stimulating root and shoot growth [6]. Received:- 13 April 2023/ Revised:- 17 April 2023/ Accepted:- 24 April 2023/ Published: 30-04-2023 Copyright @ 2023 International Journal of Environmental and Agriculture Research This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted Non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.