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Department of Botany, Amrit Campus, Lainchour, Tribhuvan University, Leknath Marg, Kathmandu, Nepal 44600
The seed germination of Orobanche is initiated by the stimulants present in the root exudates of host plants. Therefore, in order to find out the polarity nature of germination stimulants, root extract of tomato, tobacco and brinjal plants were assayed through different organic solvents of varying polarity by the flow chart method. Hexane and ethyl acetate fractions of root extract of tobacco, tomato and brinjal induced better germination than any other solvent tested. Tobacco root extract fractions isolated in ethyl acetate induced the highest germination compared to hexane. Tomato root extract fractions in different solvents also produced similar results. The performance of root extract of brinjal was more or less similar to that of tobacco and tomato root extracts except that the percentage of germination in both the solvents was greater than in other two host plants. The polarity of one form of stimulants matches with that of hexane (1.89) and polarity of another form with that of ethyl acetate (6.02).