Growth response of olive cultivars to air layering
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Abstract
The olive (Olea europaea saliva L.) has been little studied for its genetic improvement due to slow rate of seed germination, long juvenile phase and prevailing self-incompatibility. That’s why this study was conducted to assess the “Response of different olive varieties to air layering” during July, 2016 at Olive Research Farm Sangbhatti, Agricultural Research Institute (ARI) Tarnab, Peshawar, Pakistan. Air-layering was done in July on five olive cultivars (pendalino, coranica, chetoui, leccino and local variety) using rendomized complete block (RCB) design having three replications. Our findings revealed significantly different results for days to rooting, number of roots plant, root length, root diameter and root weight in response to air layering. Olive cultivar pendalino took maximum days to callus formation and rooting and produced longer and denser roots, while with respect to root diameter and weight chetoui was observed best cultivar. Local verities took minimum days to root and callus appearance and established earlier compared to others. On the basis of the aforesaid results variety chetoui performed best in terms of rooting. Thus it is recommended that in area with sufficient water availability local cultivar should be grown while cultivar chetui should be grown in area with scares water availability because of its good rooting system and produce relatively good yield than others cultivars.
Keywords: Air layering; Callus formation; Olive; Root length; Root diameter