Effects of plant growth regulators and growing media on propagation and field establishment of Stevia rebaudiana: a medicinal plant of commerce

K Abha Manohar,Gopal Shukla,Sumit Chakravarty,Bidhan Roy

doi:10.1186/s43170-021-00072-5

Abstract

BackgroundStevia rebaudiana is an economically important medicinal plant that has generated interest among the growers and pharmacologists in terms of its industrial or pharmaceutical value. For the mass production of the seedlings, easy and convenient techniques are lacking while, micro propagation was reported promising but still out of reach at farm level. The unavailability of quality planting materials due to non-viable seeds is restricting its mass commercial scale cultivation. The present study was therefore attempted to standardize the plant growth regulators and growing media to standardize the vegetative propagation protocol through cuttings for its mass multiplication in Terai region of West Bengal, India.MethodsGrowing media (soil, FYM, saw dust and sand) as sole and in combination and growth hormones (IAA, IBA and NAA in different concentration and a commercial formulation i.e. Totoroot© with different exposure time) were compared with control (i.e. sole soil and no hormone treatment, respectively) to standardize the nursery protocol of Stevia.ResultsSand used as sole was found the best growing media for survival and growth of cuttings while, cuttings treated with commercial growth hormone formulation for 5 mins was best. Cuttings treated with commercial growth hormone formulation performed significantly better in the field with respect to survival, growth and production of leaves.ConclusionThe study recommends the use of sole sand media and commercial growth hormone formulation with 5 mins exposure time for mass nursery production of Stevia cuttings in Terai zone of West Bengal due to their better performance both in the nursery and after transplanting in the field.

Highlights

Stevia rebaudiana is an economically important medicinal plant that has generated interest among the growers and pharmacologists in terms of its industrial or pharmaceutical value
Collection of cutting and setting of experiment The stem cuttings of Stevia rebaudiana were collected from one year old healthy and uniform plants maintained by the Department of Forestry, Uttar Banga Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Pundibari and cutting of the apical portion of the branch was used as planting material in the experiments
Stevia cutting propagated in sand as growing media survived the most and is the best growing medium for propagation of Stevia stem cuttings in the study

Summary

Introduction

Stevia rebaudiana is an economically important medicinal plant that has generated interest among the growers and pharmacologists in terms of its industrial or pharmaceutical value. Cultivation of commercially important medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) is in high demand as the global community is favoring green and herbal oriented. In India stevia has generated interest among plant biotechnologists and pharmacologists in terms of its industrial or commercial and pharmaceutical importance (Abdul Razak et al 2014; Bisht et al 2017; Das and Mandal 2010; Das et al 2011; Debnath 2008; Jain et al 2009; Gantait et al 2015; Patwardhan et al 2016). As regard to diabetic market in India, stevia will give good remuneration to the farmers (Hossain et al 2017)

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Results

Conclusion