IntroductionThe term "vegetable" usually refers to the fresh edible portions of certain herbaceous plants' roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruit, or seeds and these plant parts are either eaten fresh or prepared in a number of ways for nutritional purposes (Fadda et al., 2018;Galiana-Belaguer et al., 2018).Pepper (Capsicum spp.) is one of the warm-climate vegetables grown widely in both open fields and greenhouses worldwide (Sarafi et al., 2018). Turkey is one of the top three pepper-producing countries with over 2 million tons (http://faostat3.fao.org/). The germination and emergence of pepper seeds is often slow and nonuniform under normal as well as stressed conditions (Lorenz and Maynard, 1988;Chartzoulakis and Klapaki, 2000) Also, when compared with other vegetable seeds, its viable storage period is very short and seeds deteriorate quickly (Demir and Okcu, 2004;Khan et al., 2009;Yadav et al., 2011). Nongerminating seeds and nonuniform and unhealthy plants increase the cost of plants growing per area. In recent years, there has been widespread vegetablegrowing throughout Turkey that requires investment in establishing seedlings. Seedling quality is very important in species grown from seedlings because it is affected by the growth media, climatic conditions, and cultivar applications after planting, which affect the plant growth and yield (Sahin et al., 2002;Korkmaz et al., 2010;Rajjou et al., 2012). The aim of commercial seedling production is to obtain a high emergence rate as well as healthy and homogeneous seedlings in a short time period. There are some applications, called priming, that initiate the physiological process of germination with limited water intake under controlled conditions of seeds prior to sowing, to obtain high and homogeneous seed germination both from direct sowing in the field and seedling growth. This technique is used to improve the germination and emergence of some vegetable species (Bradford et al., 1990;Pill, 1995;Taylor et al., 1998). In works done on pepper where osmotic solutions of polyethylene glycol and K and Na salts are used, it has been shown that germination and emergence are generally improved, especially under biotic and abiotic stress conditions (Amjad et al., 2007;Korkmaz and Korkmaz, 2009;Yadav et al., 2011).Capsaicin, which is synthesized and accumulated in the placental tissues of the fruit, is the major pungent
