Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

RESPONSE OF GROWTH REGULATOR ON ROOTING AND SURVIVAL PERCENTAGE OF ACID LIME [CITRUS AURANTIFOLIA (CHRISTM.) SWINGLE] AIR LAYERS

Ajay Dangi, K.S. Tomar, Arjun Kashyap, Kalyan Singh Raghuwanshi and Pratibha Jatav

Abstract

The acid lime [Citrus aurantifolia (Christm.) Swingle] is the most important fruit of India The total area and production of acid lime in Madhya Pradesh are 10.68 thousand hectares and 235 thousand MT, respectively. The vegetative multiplication through cutting, grafting, layering and budding are commonly practiced. Air layering is an easy method of propagation of this crop and it is widely used for commercial multiplication. Vegetative propagation is preferred to reproductive mode of multiplication due to easy maintenance of hereditary characters of the mother plant. Growth regulators have been used to increase the efficiency of propagation by layering. Many workers have studied in relation to these growth substances for vegetative propagation among which auxins like IBA and NAA have been found to be the most effective in rooting with varied percentage of success. However, the response of citrus to different growth regulators varied accordingly with species, change in physiological and environmental conditions of plant. Therefore, present experiment was undertaken in the Department of Horticulture, College of Agriculture, RVSKVV Gwalior, (M.P.) during the year of 2014-15 to study the Effect of growth regulator on rooting and survival percentage of acid lime air layers under Gird region of M.P. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with three replications and 9 treatments viz., control, IBA 600 ppm, IBA 1200 ppm, IBA 1800 ppm, IBA 2400 ppm, NAA 600 ppm, NAA 1200 ppm, NAA 1800 ppm and NAA 2400 ppm. The result revealed that air layering equally responded under both growth regulators in respect of all root and growth characters but in between the two growth regulators, IBA gave slightly better results as compared to NAA. Application of highest concentration of IBA (2400 ppm) followed by NAA 2400 ppm and IBA 1800 ppm gave considerably better results as compared to lower concentrations (600 and 1200 ppm) in most of the root characters viz., number of primary roots, length of primary roots, number of secondary roots, length of secondary roots and callus formation as well as survival percentage of air-layers. Maximum values of all these root characters and callus formation with higher survival percentage of air-layers were recorded from 2400 ppm IBA.