Growth Biostimulants as Synthetic Hormone Replacements for Rooting, Vegetative Growth and Chemical Constituents Promotion in Rose Cuttings Under Different Growing Media

Abstract

The objective of the current study to evaluate rooting media, growth biostimulants and their interactions on rooting, vegetative growth and chemical constituents of rose cuttings. This investigation was laid out in a factorial experiment, the main factor (rooting media) consists of three treatments sand, palm peat and sand + palm peat (1:1 v:v), while the secondary factor consists of seven treatments control (tap water), Aloe vera gel extract (AVE) at 2 and 4%, moringa leaf extract (MLE) at 2 and 4% and seaweed extract (SWE) at 2 and 4%, as soaking-cuttings treatments. The obtained data showed that rooting media of sand + palm peat (1:1 v:v) caused a significant increase in all traits of rose, which includes rooting percentage, root length, root number, root fresh weight and root dry weight, plant height, branch number, stem diameter, leaf number, shoot fresh weight and shoot dry weight, total chlorophyll content and total carbohydrates %. As for soaking-cuttings treatments with growth biostimulants found that most concentrations significantly increased these traits under study, as compared to control. Clearly, the highest values were obtained by soaking rose cuttings in moringa leaf extract (MLE) at 4% over control. Regarding to the combined between two examined factors, the best results in rooting and growth rose cuttings were obtained using the mixture of rooting media sand + palm peat (1:1 v:v) with moringa leaf extract at 4% or moringa leaf extract at 2%, in most cases, during the two experimental seasons.