Ali Salehi Sardoei
The guava, the most grown for high quality in Iran, is generally regarded as showing very good rooting ability. However, cuttings sometimes show moderate or even poor rooting performances, a problem likely related to the use of inappropriate rooting media. The aim of this work was to determine the most successful media among those traditionally used and to identify promising alternatives. march cuttings were planted in 8 different media in under mist propagation conditions. Substrates such as soil loam, Silt, sawdust, perlite, Sand, sand-coco peat, sand-perlite and silt-perlite were used pure or in mixtures. the results shown effect of different media (p<0.01) on root length, shoot length and shoot dry weight. Experimental results has shown that, high rooting percentage was achieved by semi-woody cuttings in sand with average of 20%, while the lowest percentage was obtained in loam and sawdust bed with average of 6.66%. The high and the lowest number of shoot number of shoot was achieved in soil loam, perlite and sand-perlite (1:1 v/v) 5.66, 2.66 and 3 respectively which show significant difference. Soil loam and sawdust, except for shoot number and root diameter, had the lowest positive effect on guava rooting. The highest rooting percentage, shoot length, dry and fresh weight of shoot was achieved in sand. coco peat-perlite (1:1 v/v) had no effect on rooting and their application had no positive effect on guava rooting.
