Screening of Selected Hosts for Sandalwood Seedlings at Nursery Stage Based on Host Cation Exchange Capacity

Abstract

Cation exchange capacity (CEC) of host is a well-recognized criterion to establish the suitable hosts for sandalwood. An experiment for nine months was laid down to find suitableprimary hosts on the basis of CEC of host root, morphology, host use efficiency (HUE) and biomass of sandalwood at seedling stage in the nursery of Institute of Wood Science and Technology, Malleshwaram, Bengaluru, with 10 treatments (different hosts including control), 3 replications in Complete Randomized Design (CRD). Based on preliminary data, increased and decreased CEC values of host roots were categorized as A and B, respectively. Results indicated that after being parasitized, decreased CEC of host root (category B) possibly increased the HUE of sandalwood seedlings consequently, increased its biomass in comparison to hosts belonged to category A (increased CEC) in nursery condition. Among these treatments, T4 ( Santalum album + Alternanthera ficoidea ), T5 ( Santalum album + Aerva sanguinolenta ) and T8 ( Santalum album + Mentha arvensis L.) were good primary hosts for sandalwood seedlings belonged to category B. This indicated that hosts with decreased root CEC may not always poor as reported previously. The observations also validated the fact that primary hosts are necessary for sandalwood seedlings at early nursery stage to achieve better growth.