This study was conducted to study the effects of different priming methods on germination rate and percentage under salinity stress and to determine the stability of primed seeds. In order to accomplish this, three different experiments were conducted separately, including the experiment of water uptake, the experiment of salinity stress, and the experiment of storability of primed seeds. Priming treatments were five levels of control (unprimed), hydropriming (Hyd), priming with humic acid (HA), priming with salicylic acid (SA) and priming with gibberellic acid (GA). Salinity stresses were four levels of 0, 4, 8 and 12 ds/m of NaCl. The stability of prime seeds was investigated over a period of 226 days after priming. The results of water uptake showed that rapeseeds entered into the third phase of water uptake after 18 hours of hydration. The results of the salinity experiment showed that salinity levels of 12 and 0 ds/m had the lowest (74.3 %) and highest (83 %) germination percentage, respectively. In terms of germination rate, there were significant differences between GA (0.034 h^-1), HA (0.036 h^-1) and Hyd (0.036 h^-1) with C (0.019 h^-1) and SA (0.027 h^-1). Generally speaking, primed seeds germinated better than control seeds at all levels of salinity. The storability of primed seeds and control seeds had no significant decrease during storage. Finally, it was concluded that seed priming increased the tolerance to salinity stress; in terms of storability, there was no significant difference between primed seeds and primed seeds could be stored in the same way as control seeds.

Highlights:

1. At the current research, the stability of prime seeds was investigated for the first time.
2. There was no significant difference between the storability of primed seeds and control (unprimed) at each sampling time (with an exception for SA).
3. Primed seeds had better germination performance than control at the all salinity stress levels.
4. Seed priming treatments using gibberellic acid, humic acid and hydropriming were the best compared with the other treatments.