Effect of polycontainers on germination, seeding vigour, root characters and budding success in aonla

摘要

Aonla (Emblica officinalis Gaertn.) has gained considerable importance in recent years due to its wide edaphoclimatic adoptability, multiple utility, prolific-bearing habit and hardiness to biotic and abiotic stresses. There is a heavy demand of vegetatively propagated aonla plant by growers but the availability of planting material is quite insufficient. Though the technique of aonla propagation has already been standardized, i.e. patch budding (Nand, 4; Pandey and Prasad, 5 and Pathak et al., 7), the success varied markedly under different agroclimatic conditions. Generally, one-year-old seedlings of aonla are used as rootstock for budding purpose. However, in case of ber only 3-4 months old seedlings raised in polytubes can be used for budding operation (Pareek, 6). Raising of rootstock in nursery beds and lifting budded plants with earth ball in highly sandy soils is also practically not feasible. Transportation of plants from long distance may sometimes also cause high mortality particularly under hot arid conditions. Therefore, to reduce the time for raising the rootstock and to avoid damage during handling and transportation, seeds of aonla were sown in polytubes in first week of March but seedlings did not attain proper thickness for budding during July- August. Keeping these facts in view, an experiment was conducted to find out the effect of different types of polycontainers on germination, seeding vigour, root characters and budding success in aonla under hot arid ecosystem.