Seed to Seed: Know your Masoor dal/ Pink Lentil through leaves and flowers
This is a small project Seed2Seed to make dal more interesting.
Sabut masoor/ Brown lentils have all the characteristics of a seed. It has a brown skin which is called the coat, two pink colour halves called the cotyledon. The embryo is in between the cotyledons which cannot be seen with naked eyes. The embryo is the tiny plant that eventually becomes the plant under favourable conditions.
A whole lentil without the skin is an unprotected seed. The probability of not getting a plant is much more than getting one. In split masoor the embryo i.e. the tiny plant is destroyed, so you can never get a plant out of it.
We sowed few sabut masoor and watched as they grew.
Experiment 1
Soaked a few whole masoor seed/ Brown lentil for about 4 hours and prepared a pot for the seeds.
Sowed the seeds and covered with 2 cm of soil and watered sparingly.
For few days there was nothing visible on the surface of the soil.
But the seeds inside the soil were busy preparing themselves to grow into plants.
The seeds absorb more water from the soil and swell up. The coats break open. The roots are the first to come out of the seeds. They go down into the soil in search of water. Next the shoots shoot up in search of sunlight.
To see all these changes, we did a second experiment which is the experiment 2.
Experiment 2
On 1st day, we soaked few sabut masoor for 4 hours and prepared a drinking glass with soil to about 2 cm from the top and watered it sparingly.
Placed 3 seeds far apart and covered them with soil to the brim of the glass as shown in the picture.
On 2nd and 3rd day nothing was visible through the glass.
On 4th day one of the seeds could be seen clearly with its shoot going up and a small part of the root going down.
On 5th day , the shoot almost reached the top but its root was not visible.
In another seed, the root was visible and reached the bottom of the glass.
On the 6th day the shoot emerged from the soil. The top picture is the view of the plant from top.
In the bottom picture, we dug out little soil to show you the position of the seed, the root , shoot and the stem with leaves above the soil.
When the seed remains inside the soil and nourishes the plant during germination, then it is called hypogeal germination.
In Experiment 2 we saw the germination of the seeds inside the soil.
Now we will go back to Experiment 1 and follow the growth of the plants in pot.
Experiment 1 continuing ……
On 5th day there was nothing visible on the surface of the pot.
On 6th day green shoots appeared in the pot with enfolded leaves.
On 7th day, the leaves unfolded.
The picture on the left shows the shoots with unfolding leaves.
Right hand side of that same picture gives an enlarged view of the leaves.
Once the leaves are out the plants grow fast. They no longer depend on the cotyledons for their food. The leaves prepare its own food with the help of sunlight, this process is called photosynthesis.
By 9th day, the plants became taller and leaves were more prominent. Leaves were coming out in pairs instead of a single leaf from the leafstalk coming out from the main stem. Such leaves are called compound leaves.
So Masoor dal has compound leaves.
(The picture on the right is an enlargement of the picture on the left.)
By 11th day the plants were already 10.5 cm tall and every plant had at least 3 alternate pairs of leaflets.
To make it visible, a white paper was placed behind.
By 12th day, few plants started getting 2 pairs of leaflets from a single leafstalk.
After 14 days most of the plants had 2 pairs of leaflets.
Every day the height of the plants increased.
Finally, on 30th day all the plants had 3, 4 or 5 pairs of leaflets in every leafstalk, clearly showing the shape of the compound leaf.
The plants were growing well. They were herbs like with slender stems.
The pot became crowded.
We made a bamboo support to keep the plants upright.
Few plants were weeded out so that the remaining could grow more freely.
The plants were 45 -47 days old and about 21 cm tall when the first flower was noticed.
We were so happy to see the flower.
The flower could not be focused well. The flower was white in colour. It rose from the point between the leafstalk and the stem.
A few days later, more flowers were seen.
(Flowers are shown with arrows in the left hand picture.)
Each flower rose from the point between the leafstalks and the branch /stem.
About 55 days later, a little pod was noticed. One of the flowers had turned into a pod.
The pod is shown in the picture with an arrow head.
We left the pod on the plant for about 8 days to mature. No other pods were seen. The plants began to dry up.
Plucked the pod carefully from the plant and allowed the shell to dry thoroughly.
When a plant flowers and gives its fruit as pod, then the plant is called leguminous plant.
Masoor dal plant belongs to the legume family.
After 10 days we removed the shell and placed the seed on a plate.
It was shinning like a little diamond.
Who could ask for more?
The pod was about 1.1 cm. It contained only one seed 0.4 cm. It was brown in colour.
It took 65 days for masoor dal/Pink lentil to complete the story of seed to seed.
Masoor dal is a winter crop. We started the project during monsoon. Considering that, it was a good harvest.
The End
Dal On The Table 