Factors Influencing Plant Propagation Efficiency Via Stem Cuttings

The work aimed to study all the possible factors affecting efficiency of plant propagation via stem cuttings. Several factors including type of cutting, culture medium, type and concentration of growth regulators were investigated. These factors were studied on Ficus hawaii as woody tree and Chrysanthemum morifolium as herbaceous plant to investigate the effect of plant type factor. All experiments were performed under plastic house conditions to achieve the objectives of work. It was found that all studied factors are very effective for plant production and growth. Intermediate cuttings were found to be more suitable than terminal ones for the propagation of ficus. Peat moss and sand media showed significantly higher survival, rooting and growth compared to perlite and the mixture 1:1:1 of the three media. Treatment of cuttings by indole acetic acid (IAA) was more effective than treatment by either indole butyric acid (IBA) or naphthyl acetic acid (NAA). The treatment of cuttings by growth regulators was essential where all studied concentrations were better than control and 50 ppm was the best concentration. Response of chrysanthemum to culture media was different from that of ficus where the mixture and perlite media gave significantly better results than peat moss and sand media which proves the importance of plant type factor. Therefore, the optimum propagation efficiency of ficus can be obtained by the cultivation of intermediate cuttings in peat moss after treating by 50 ppm of IAA. For chrysanthemum, the optimum propagation efficiency can be obtained by the cultivation of terminal cuttings in a mixture 1:1:1 of peat moss, sand and perlite after treating by 50 ppm of IAA. The obtained results showed the effectiveness of several factors on propagation of woody and herbaceous plants. It should be of great importance on both applied level for mass production of plants and fundamental level for understanding plant propagation process.