Effect of IBA and NAA on Rooting of Stem Cutting in Dragon Fruit [Hylocereus undatus (Haworth) Britton & Rose

Abstract

Dragon fruit (Hylocereus undatus (Haworth) Britton & Rose) is promisingly a new and exotic crop, India has great potential for its cultivation in semiarid tracts. It can be propagated either sexually or asexually by stem cuttings. The sexually propagated seedlings will take 3 or more years for bearing than that of propagated through stem cuttings. The rootings in cuttings of some species occurs without exogenous auxins treatment, but majority do not root easily. An investigation was carried out to study the effect of IBA, NAA and their combinations on rootings in stem cuttings of Dragon fruit at the Department of Horticulture, BBAU, Lucknow during the year 2019-20, in order to standardize the type and concentration of growth regulators for rooting and success rate in stem cuttings. The experiment was laid out by following randomized block design with nine treatments and three replications. The stem cuttings of Dragon fruit treated with IBA, NAA and their combinations result reveals that, length of longest root (21.33 cm), average number of roots per cutting (41.76), diameter of the root cutting (1.38 mm), fresh weight of root cutting (2.22 g) and dry weight of root cutting (0.59 g) was recorded maximum in cutting treated with IBA 4000 ppm. This was probably because of simulative actions of exogenous auxin (IBA) in the formation of new root tips in stem cuttings.