Rooting Hormone and Substrate Effects on Mini-Cloned Mulberry (Morus indica)

Abstract

Manipulation of propagation is a common practice in many commercial plant to obtain healthy and resistance plant for good yield. Many propagation techniques such as cutting, grafting, layering were evolved focusing on low budget production of high quality planting materials. An experiment was conducted to focus on standardizing a sound protocol for mini clonal propagation of M. indica variety V1. Among different concentrations of growth hormones evaluated, apical cuttings treated with IBA at 3000 ppm recorded significantly higher sprouting per cent (82.39%), rooting per cent (63.27%), survival per cent (68.80%), root length (22.22 cm), shoot length (22.05 cm), number of roots (14.40) and number of leaves (18.30) followed by NAA at 4000 ppm. Besides that, various rooting medium used, Soil: Coir pith: FYM (1:1:1) registered superior in survival per cent (14.26%), sprouting per cent (67.50%), rooting per cent (38.77%) and number of roots (12.45) whereas Soil: Sand: Vermicompost (1:1:1) registered maximum performance in shoot length (16.98 cm), root length (16.42 cm) and number of leaves (14.18). Hence it was clearly evident that IBA at 3000 ppm treated plants raised under Soil: Coir pith: FYM medium suitable for mass multiplication of M. indica.