Effect of cutting type on rooting and survival of hybrid eucalyptus cuttings

Abstract

Eucalyptus is very common in many parts of the country providing thousands of small farmers with a regular supply for fuel wood and building poles. Increasingly, more commercial growers are cultivating Eucalyptus for longer transmission poles and timber. Successful development of high-productivity forest stands is largely dependent on the quality standard of the relevant seedlings. Vegetative propagation through cuttings is the preferred method for their commercial use. However, their clonal propagation is hindered by the very poor rooting success of cuttings. The present study aimed at assessing the effect of cutting type, moisture content and combination of moisture content level on different cutting type on rooting and survival of cuttings of a commercially important Eucalyptus grandis x Eucalyptus camaldulensis clone (GC 769).

An experiment was conducted at Agromax (U) LtdNursery Site in Nangabo Sub County in Wakiso District to investigate the effects of the cutting typeson survival and rooting of clonal EucalyptusGC-769 hybrid cuttingsin the nursery. Stem cuttings of the plant were subjected to different treatments; stem cutting types (terminal and non-terminal cuttings) and moisture content level (watering once, twice and thrice) in four weeks. The experiment was conducted under normal nursery conditions to determine the cutting type and moisture content level best for the rooting and survival of the Eucalyptus GC-769 clone. The experimental design was a 3 x 2 factorial in complete randomized design (CRD) with six replications. The results revealed that the cutting types and moisture content had effect on the rooting and survival of the Eucalyptus GC-769 clone. Cutting mortality was lower when cuttings were watered twice. Further, differences were significant between watering treatments (p =0.02) which is less than α= 0.05 and modal was 58.3% explained (Table 4.2).Percentage rooting was higher for non-terminal cutting (55.1%) irrespective of the moisture content level. Non terminal cutting under once watering level during rainy season however, gave the best rooting followed by terminal cutting under same moisture content. Both cutting types had low survival rate under thrice watering. Which shows that there is a relationship between Moisture intervals and the survival (r= -0.721, P= 0.008).