Effect of plant growing media on soft- wood cutting of guava cv. Sardar (L-49)

Introduction

Guava Psidium guajava L., is evergreen dicotyledonous plants that are a member of the Myrtaceae family. It is native to the Central America. Though common, guava is a significant commercial fruit crop in India and is referred to as the "Apple of the tropics" and "Poor Man's Apple." Because of huge amount of ascorbic acid in it. After oranges, guavas are a major source of vitamin C. It is a good source of Pectin and mineral namely Calcium and Phosphorus. Guava also used as a traditionally medicinal plant for treatment of diarrhoea, gastroenteritis and analgesic properties. Due to its delightful flavour, aroma, and perfect ratio of pectin, sugar, and acid, it has a large market potential. In addition to having a high nutritional content, it is robust, heavy bearing, and produces good yields. (Singh et al. 2000) [25] . Even it thrives well in saline and poorly drained soil also. It is commercially important fruit crop of India and 4 th important fruit crop after mango, banana and citrus. It is prolific bearer and highly remunerative crop. Due to its versatility, area under guava production is expanding. As such, the demand for quality planting is increasing rapidly. Guava is propagated by both sexually through seed and asexually methods like budding, grafting, layering and cutting (Zamir et al., 2003, Chandra et al., 2004) [29,5] . Use of sexual method of propagation is restricted to breeding programme only as genetic purity is not maintained due to segregation and recombination of characters. Means, unique characteristics of certain variety cannot be multiplied or preserved through seed propagation. Vegetative propagation of guava is the possible approach to ascertain uniformity among the progeny and to maintain good quality fruits (Giri et al., 2004) [8] . To avoid segregation and to get true to types of plants of the particular variety, clonal propagation is widely used in guava (Giri et al., 2004; Singh et al., 2007) [8,24] . It has been reported that by applying root promoting hormones enhanced the root initiation and growth performance of soft wood grafting in guava (Hafeez et al., 1988) [10] . However, assessing the potential of these methods under particular climatic conditions is very essential. The rooting of guava cuttings is influenced by several internal and external factors, such as age, health, nutritional status (carbohydrate reserves and nitrogen compounds), hormonal balance (auxin and cytokinin) of the mother tree, cutting age, type of cutting, presence or absence of leaves at cutting, cuttings time, environment conditions such as temperature and humidity, phenolic compound oxidation and treatment of cuttings with growth regulators (Evans, 1992: Hartmann, et al., 2002: Sardoei, 2014 [7,11,22,27,1,20] . However, these problems can be overcome by use of growth regulators such as auxins (Ljung 2013) [15] which are known to enhance rooting as evident from the literature. However, use of appropriate growth regulator alone is not enough. Therefore, there is need to use proper media along with growth regulator. Because, propagation media is considered as essential part of propagation because rooting competency depends upon type of medium used (Ingram, et al., 1993; Chadha, 2007; Mehmood et al., 2013) [12,4,19] as well as for developing stock plants. Rooting medium directly affects quality and percentage of rooting (Loach et al., 1988) [16] . The suitability of the rooting medium depends on the species, type of cuttings, growing conditions, season of the year and the cost effectiveness of the medium components (Macdonald, 1986; Hartmann et al., 2002) [18,11] . A use of good rooting media with rooting hormone will increase root induction (Leonardi et al., 2001) [14] . Therefore, a research project was envisaged at Agriculture college, Dhule with the view of objective: To study different combination of media for maximum root initiation and to find best combination of rooting media.

Materials and Methods

At a height of 250 meter above mean sea level. Field is located at latitude 20.9 North and longitude 74.78 East. Dhule is situated in the Deccan Plateau region of North Maharashtra. Apart from the south-west monsoon season, the district has a warm, dry climate.

Preparation of Cuttings

Guava soft wood cuttings have been collected from the 15year-old cv. Sardar orchard (L-49). Cuttings from the terminal portion of this season's growth, measuring around 15-20 cm in length and containing two to three buds, were taken with a pencil size thickness. The lower section quickly takes into 1.1% Carbedizim solution to avoid fungal an infestation.

Preparation solutions of growth regulators

IBA was dissolved into separate solutions of 2 g and 4 g in a little amount of acetone in a beaker to create concentrations of 2000 and 4000 ppm. Thereafter, distilled water was added to create a volume of up to 1000 ml. The necessary concentration was made by dissolving 2 and 4 ml of paclobutrazol (cultar) in 1000 ml of distilled water to get the 200 ppm and 400 ppm concentrations. Keradix powder is the herbal extract available in powder form. It is used by nurserymen for enhancing rooting of cuttings of different plants. (Bhusari et al., 2023) [3]

Experimental details

The research studies were set up using a Factorial Randomized Block Design (FRBD) and were replicated three times. The study consisted of 35 treatments total, which were combinations of various growth regulators (Factor A) and rooting media (Factor B). There were fifty plants in each treatment. [17] and also can be attributed to the beneficial physical characteristics of coir pith (Smith, 1995) [26] like aeration and water holding capacity.

As per the data represented in Table 1. At 30 DAP, significantly highest success of 58.63 percent was registered in the treatment M 4 (Soil + Perlite-1:1). This was followed by the treatment M 5 (Soil + Peat moss-1:1) recording 42.77 percent success at 30 DAP. On the other side treatment M 7 recorded lowest rooting percentage (20.17%) at 30 days after planting. Sohnika et al. (2015) [27] emphzised importance of rooting media and observed highest success in vermiculite + sand + FYM (1:1:1) during which was at par with (77.02%) in vermiculite + sand (1:1) and (76.01%) in perlite + sand + FYM (1:1:1). Similar observations were also made by Abdul et al., (2013) [1] in guava.

Obvious influence growing media on number of leaves per cutting as evident from the (Table 2). The treatment M 4 (Soil + Perlite-1:1) recorded significantly the highest number of leaves at 30, 60, 90 and 120 DAP and exhibited linear increase in number of leaves. This treatment produced 2.74, 7.29. 12.47 and 20.62 leaves at 30, 60, 90 and 120 DAP, respectively. The treatment M 7 (Soil + Vermi-compost-1:1) was found to be poor and recorded 0.68. 0.77. 085 and 0.26 number of leaves at 30, 60, 90 and 120 DAP. At 120 days there decrease in number of leaves because of high phenolic compound present in cuttings. (Arafat et al. 2020) [2] Dhatrikarani et al. (2019) [6] also observed significant influence of rooting media on number leaves in guava in guava cv. Tainwan Pink.

Types of rooting media had significant influence on number of shoots per cutting 30, 60, 90, 120 days. As data represented in table 3, the rooting medium treatment M 4 (Soil + Perlite-1:1) exhibited superior performance that it recorded significantly the highest number of shoots at all growth stages of observations i.e. at 30, 60, 90 ad 120 days which respectively recorded 0.89, 0.99, 1.53 and 2.42 shoots and linear increase in numbers of shoots with advancement of age of cutting. Sardoei (2014) [22] also reported significant effect of rooting media shoot number and he obtained maximum number of shoot in soil loam and perlite medium. However, relatively poor root formation recorded during extremely hot and cold conditions was due to low activity of cambium to proliferate in unfavorable and adverse environmental conditions (Goel and Behl, 1994) [9] .

Number of Primary roots

Different rooting media had a significant impact on the number of primary roots. Perusal of data in table 4. showed at 120 DAP, soft wood cuttings planted in the treatment M 4 (Soil + Perlite-1:1) produced significantly highest number of primary roots per cutting (2.73), followed by M 5 (Soil + Peat-moss-1:1) which had 1.25 primary roots per cutting and the least number of primary roots was recorded in the rooting media Soil + Vermi-compost-1:1 (M 7 ) which had 0.22 number of primary roots per cutting. Results are in similar line with Sohnika et al. (2015) [27] they obtained good results with Vermiculite + Sand+ FYM (1:1:1). No rooting in the cuttings treated with Keradix indicating that it is not useful in the guava propagation.

Number of secondary roots

In case of rooting media (Table 4.), treatment M 4 (Soil + Perlite-1:1) registered significantly highest number of secondary roots i.e. 5.48 roots, whereas on the other hand treatment M 7 (Soil + Vermi-compost-1:1) recorded least number of secondary roots (0.30). Sohnika et al. (2015) [27] who observed significant impact of rooting media on number of secondary roots reported significant results with Vermiculite + Sand+ FYM (1:1:1) followed by Perlite + Sand+ FYM (1:1:1).

The significant influence of rooting media was clearly noticed table 4. and the significantly the highest length of roots was observed in the soft wood cuttings of guava placed in the treatment M 4 (Soil + Perlite in 1:1) which recorded 3.34 cm length of root at 120 DAP. The treatments M 7 (Soil + Vermi-compost-1:1) had very poor performance recording 0.24 cm length of root. Results are in similar line with Sohnika et al. (2015) [27] Fresh weight of roots (g) Positive impact of rooting media on fresh weight of roots was noticed in Table 5. with respect to the treatment M 4 (Soil + Perlite-1:1 medium) exhibited significantly the highest fresh weight of roots (2.97 g) and followed by the M 5 (Soil + Peat-moss-1:1) which recoded (1.33 g) fresh weight of roots. The lowest fresh weight of roots was observed in the treatments M 7 (Soil + Vermi-compost-1:1) which recorded 0.25 g fresh weight of roots. Results are almost similar to the results of Sardoei (2014) [22] who found highest fresh and dry weight of roots in Perlite + Sand. Sohnika et al. (2015) [27] also reported Perlite+ Sand+ FYM as best media for guava cuttings.

Considerable influence of rooting media on dry weight of roots was observed in (table.5). Results showed that guava soft wood cuttings placed in the M 4 (Soil + Perlite-1:1) recorded the significantly the highest dry weight of roots (0.66 g) at 120 DAP. On the other hand M 6 (Soil + potting mixture 1:1) recorded lowest dry weight of softwood cuttings0.12 g. Results are in similar lines with those of Sardoei (2014) [22] who found highest fresh and dry weight of roots in Perlite + Sand. Qadri et al. (2018) [21] obtained maximum weight of dry roots in top soil rooting media in soft wood cuttings of guava.

Growing media treatments significantly influenced survival percentage of soft wood cuttings of guava showed in Table 5. Results represented that the highest survival of 35.36% was observed in the treatment M 4 (Soil + Perlite-1:1) followed by those planted in the treatment M 5 (Soil + Peatmoss-1:1) which was 22.03 percent, Whereas the treatment M 7 (Soil + Vermi-compost-1:1) recorded the lowest softwood cutting survival rate 3.77 percent. Significant effect of media on survival percentage of guava cutting might be due to porosity, aeration and less water holding capacity which helps to produce more number of adventitious roots and thereby increase the survival percentage

Conclusion

The combination of rooting media M 4 (Soil + Perlite (1:1) was found superior for all the characters i.e. maximum rooting, number of leaves and shoots, number of primary and secondary roots, length of roots, fresh and dry weight of roots and survival of the soft wood cutting guava cv. Sardar except percent success at 30 DAP in which M 6 (soil + potting mixture 1:1) showed superior results. The results clearly indicates in guava that, where rooting is difficult, use of growing media is more important. Cuttings are also helpful in obtaining desired amount of vigorous plants in a shorter period of time.

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