Plantlet quality of Coffea canephora propagated vegetatively from different stem cutting types

Abstract

Coffea canephora trees are grown from cutting-derived plantlets. Thus, the objective was to evaluate the performance of C. canephora plantlets propagated by stem cuttings with different models. The experiment to assess the plantlet performance in the nursery stage was arranged in a completely randomized design and that of the early field development in randomized blocks. The four evaluated treatments consisted of different cutting types with different number of nodes, number of leaves and presence or absence of the apical bud. In the nursery phase, characteristics related to the shoot and root development of the plantlets and the shoot characteristics of the early field development were evaluated. The data were subjected to analysis of variance by the F test (p≤0.05) and the means compared by the Tukey test at 5% probability. The hierarchical clustering method UPGMA was applied to detect the similarity between treatments considering all studied variables. The plantlets grown in the treatments with cuttings with two leaf pairs, with and without the apical bud, and the treatment with three leaf pairs with the apical bud were superior to those grown by the conventional method in the nursery phase. The plantlets grown from cuttings with two leaf pairs and the presence of the apical bud stimulated the early field development of coffee trees. Thus, it is suggested not to cut the apical bud on the cutting, since it would bring better seedling quality and without additional costs for its production