Effects of rooting hormone and cutting length on rooting ability, growth performance and biomass of two important herbs in Malaysia
2021
Samsuri Toh Harun | Farah Fazwa Md. Ariff | Syafiqah Nabilah Samsul Bahari | Muhammad Hanif Mohd Azizan | Norhayati Saffie | Masitah Mohd Taini | Muhammad Ihsan Bahazain
Orthosiphon stamineus (misai kucing) and Clinacanthus nutans (belalai gajah) were among the important medicinal plants that rich in antioxidant. As these species has its own demands, farmers have started to cultivate these plants in small scale plantation. Currently, the fertigation system has been introduced in herbal cultivation. Through this system, watering and fertilizer application can be control at precise time and increase nutrient absorption by plants thus wastage of agriculture input could be avoided. These two herbs can be propagated through stem cuttings. However the information on growing the cuttings in fertigation system is still lacking. Therefore, this study was develop to evaluate the effects of rooting hormone application (Treatment 1: 0.1% IBA, Treatment 2: No hormone) and the appropriate cutting length (Length 1: 5 cm, Length 2: 10 cm) on O. stamineus and C. nutans to obtain optimum rooting performance, plant growth and biomass. Cuttings in treatment 2 (no hormone) produced greater root number in C. nutans and O. stamineus at week four of the cuttings. For cutting length, C. nutans with 10 cm length produced vigorous growth compared to 5 cm length. While, cutting length gave no significant difference on the growth of O. stamineus. The hormone treatment and cutting length shows no significant difference on the fresh andry weight of both species harvested at 18 weeks of the experiment. The findings from this study is significance to farmers in the aspect of cost savings due to no rooting hormone were required in growing both herbal plants using the fertigation system. In addition, appropriate cutting length for optimum plants growth were discovered for both species through this study.
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