GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF GUAVA CUTTING UNDER DIFFERENT GROWING MEDIA AND PLANT CUTTING TAKING HEIGHT

M. Moazzam, M. Muzammil J., Imran Ul Haq, Shan Bakhtawar Khan, Rashad Qadri, M. Awais Ghani, Yaodong Yang, Imran Khan, Muhammad Azam

Abstract: This study was conducted to explore the survival and growth performance of Guava cutting under different growing media and cutting height at Nursery Sanitation Project, University of Agriculture, Pakistan. In this experiment different growing media such as Peat moss:Sand:Sawdust (1:1:1), Silt, Top soil and Bagasse:Silt (1:1) and different cutting height (Bottom, Middle and Top) were evaluated by using single concentration of IBA (400 mg kg-1). Results indicated that Silt media had recorded significantly higher number of roots (28.78±3.99), root length (24.95±5.00 cm), number of leaves (4.88±0.53), number of sprouts (3.79±0.64), shoot length (26.86±4.63 cm), sprouts length (19.09± 3.05 cm), stem diameter (5.30±0.65 mm), dry weight (139.25±14.92 mg), fresh weight of guava cutting (877.57±27.26 mg) and survival percentage (83.33±16.33%). Nonsignificant differences were observed with various cutting heights in terms of all parameters studied except stem diameter, while cutting from bottom showed highly significant differences in dry weight (146.48±8.93 mg), fresh weight (808.32±45.24 mg) and survival percentage (75.83±13.82%). Our data shows that silt media along with rooting hormone can increase root initiation and quality of root growth therefore, the results suggested that silt should be used as growing media.

Keywords: cutting height; growing media; guava; propagation

Date published: 2018-05-03