MoongPlant

Seed to Seed : Know your Moong dal/ Green gram through leaves and flowers

Plants grow from seeds.  Sabut moong/Green gram fulfils the all the criteria of a seed. The olive green skin is its coat, the two yellow halves are the  and there is an embryo in between the two embryo which we cannot see with our naked eyes.  Embryo is the tiny plant that grows under favourable conditions.

The best time to sow sabut moong is at the beginning of the rainy season (Monsoon) in India. The crop will be ready for harvesting within 90- 100 days or even less.

We started the experiment just before monsoon.  As they say right place at the right time.

The Experiment: 1

Prepared a pot for the plants and soaked a few moong seeds for about 4 hours. 

Sowed the seeds in the pot about 1cm below the surface of the soil and then water it sparingly.

The purpose of soaking is to hasten the process of germination.

For few days there was no sign of the seeds. Everyday   watered the pot lightly to keep the soil moist. 

On the 4th day sprouting of the moong dal seeds were seen on the surface.

During those previous 4 days what actually happened to the seeds inside the soil.  To find out that, we did another experiment.

We called this  Experiment 2:

I soaked a few moong seeds and filled up a drinking glass with soil to 1 cm from the brim of the glass. Sprayed little water to moisten the soil.  Placed the soaked seeds close to the side touching the glass surface and filled it up with the remaining soil.  The dotted line is the position of the seed.

On the 2nd day seed coat burst.  Since the picture was taken through glass it was not very clear. The seed is marked with an arrow head.

On the 3nd day, the seed changed a lot.  It had a long root about 6 cm and a short stem with the cotyledons.  (Cotyledons are the 2 parts of the seed.)

On the 4rd Morning , the root went right down to the end of the glass, bent and grew about 3 cm more which was seen from the bottom of the glass giving a total length of 11 cm.

Seed or rather the cotyledons have moved upward from the dotted line to the surface of the soil.

The above glass as seen from top. The white cotyledon carried by the shoot above the soil is at the right edge.

On the 4th day, both in the glass as well as in the pot the shoots emerged to the top of the soil with their cotyledons.

So, the seeds were busy going through the different stages of germination. Absorbing moist, bursting of coats, roots going down and shoots pushing themselves up in search of sunlight.

During germination when the cotyledons emerges to the surface of the soil and behaves like leaves such germination are called epigeal.  Epi means above and geal means earth.

Now let us come back to the original Experiment 1

On 4th day.  The shoots have emerged to the surface of the soil with the cotyledons. At this stage the cotyledons play a very important role.  They supply and manufacture nutrition to the growing plant just like leaves. So the cotyledons are known as seed leaves.

(The lower picture is an enlarged view of the emerging cotyledons.)

On 5th day green leaves were noticed along with the cotyledons.

The picture below shows the pot with cotyledons and green leaves and their enlarged view.  

The first pair of green leaves is called true leaves.

On 6th day the green leaves became more  prominent.

Once the green leaves are out, the plants are cable of producing their own food with the help of sunlight.

The process of preparing food by the green leaves with the help of sunlight is known as photothynthesis.  

About 10 days later the plants became taller. The cotyledons were still hanging on to the plants.  Their function was over.  They will fall off in their own accord.

15 days later small bud shoots were noticed in between the true leaves in all the plants.

The shoot consists of a tiny stem and a leaf. The next day the shoots unfurled leaves in all the plants and each leaf showed up with 3 tiny leaflets.

When a  leafstalk has more than one leaf then it is called a compound leaf.     So Moong dal has compound leaves.

The plants grew very fast. Within a couple of days the first compound leaves became big. 

At the base of each compound leaf the next shoot was coming up.  Soon that too matured into another compound leaf.

By the time the plants were 30 days old, each plant had 2 or 3 compound leaves and plants were about about 34-35 cm in height.

After 40 days, a tiny flower bud appeared. 

The top picture on the left shows the first flower bud.  

The bottom picture shows a  beautiful yellow colour flower bloomed from the bud the following day.  

2 days later a smart pod was seen in place of the first flower long with another new flower, ( picture on the right.)

When a plant bears flower and pod as its fruit, then it is said to belong to legume family.

So Moong dal belongs to legume family.

One of the fully matured plant in the pot showed the plants had 4 compound leaves, the ‘true leaves’ were still there and  its height was about 44-45 cm tall. The leaves are marked as 1,2,3 and 4.  The flowers come out from the base of the last leafstalks.

The ‘true leaves’ were beginning to wither.

After a day or two the pod became bigger. It is green in colour with fine hair on it. And a new full  bloom flower stood by it.

One day few leaves began to curl up and the back side began to turn brown.   It looked diseased.  I consulted a gardener.  He gave me a bottle of tobacco water to spray on the leaves. 

(Few pieces tobacco leaves soaked in water overnight.  Next morning he filtered the liquid.  That was his remedy.)

 Tobacco water was sprayed for 2 days.

The tobacco water worked.  The pods began to mature.  The seeds were visible          from outside.

Soon one of the pods began to turn yellowish. I was worried thinking it may dry up and fall off.

The next day, the same pod became blackish brown.  I was thrilled.

That was the moment  I was  waiting for!

The pod should become blackish brown.

Gradually the green pod turned to blackish brown.

Allowed the pod to mature for a few days on the plant then made my first harvest after about 65 days. Wonderful ! It was a short harvest.

Kept the pod for 2 more days for the shell to dry up and then open it carefully to let the precious seeds to be displayed on a plate.

Day by day more pods turned yellow and then blackish brown.  Collected all the pods and let them dry.  To me it looked like beautiful harvest on the plate. 

This is the story of Seed to Seed of Moong dal/ Green gram.

I am happy I could show you the complete life cycle of the moongdal/ Green gram .  

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed nurturing the plants.

Please write your comments  and suggestions.  Thank you.

Keep reading ……….

14 thoughts on “MoongPlant”

  7. I sow Moong , coriander and methi regularly.
    Your Dal on the table ….
    Is amazing.
    I learn a lot.
    Thank you, Indira

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