Rooting behavior of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) hardwood cuttings in relation to genotype and irrigation frequency
From Firenze University Press Journal: Journal of Agriculture and Environment for International Development (JAEID)
Kocher Omer Salih, Horticulture Department, College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, University of Sulaimani
Aram Mohammed, Horticulture Department, College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, University of Sulaimani
Jamal Mahamood Faraj, Horticulture Department, College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, University of Sulaimani
Anwar Mohammed Raouf, Horticulture Department, College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, University of Sulaimani
Nawroz Abdul-Razzak Tahir, Horticulture Department, College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, University of Sulaimani
Pomegranate (Punica granatumL.) is a member of the Punicacease family, and it is the only species cultivated for fruit production which belongs to the PunicaL. genus (Melgarejo et al., 2012). Natural pomegranate forests are vastly distributed in the north of Iran on the Caspian Seashore, and in the Zagros Mountain plain forests in Charmahal Bakhtiayari, Fars, Kurdistan, Lorestan, Baluchistan, and the southern territories of the Alborz Mountain range. For that reason, Persia is the origin place of P. granatum(Zarie et al., 2021). Pomegranate is a deciduous shrub that grows up to 3–4 meters and sometimes reaches 9 meters (Smith, 2014). It can withstand arid, semi-arid, and salinity conditions. Hence, pomegranate is advisable for cultivation in areas where other fruits cannot be grown because of climatic change (Singh et al., 2011). Furthermore, fruits of P. granatumare an important source of antioxidants (poly-phenols: ellagic acid and punicalagin), minerals, vitamins, and tannins which collectively improve health status and immune system against many diseases, more notably the heart and cancer diseases (Sarrou et al., 2014). In addition to health benefits, pomegranate peel and seed are also used for the extraction of oil, pectin, and phenolic compounds, along with the production of biochar,biogas and bio-oil (El-Shamy and Farag, 2021). There are many cultivars of pomegranate worldwide which are frequently named depending on the place of cultivation or color of the fruit. These cultivars are exhibited in 500 genetically different cultivars and 50 of them are recognized as commercial cultivars (IPGRI, 2001). The pomegranate cultivars are generally classified according to some discernible aspects, such as taste (sweet, sweet-sour, tart, and sour), harvesting time (early, mid-season, and late), consumption pattern (juice and table fruit), and seed hardness (soft-seeded and hard-seeded) (Kahramanoglu and Usanmaz, 2016).Pomegranate propagation is conducted through seeds for obtaining new cultivars or breeding purposes, however, this method is not supposed to propagate a certain desirable cultivar as a result of the variabilities that occurred in the seedlings grown from seeds (Prabhuling and Huchesh, 2018). For achieving true-to-type pomegranate, it is vegetatively propagated through cuttings, grafting, air layering, and micropropagation, but the more usual one is cuttings propagation (Chandra et al., 2012). Hardwood cuttings are better to obtain vigorous pomegranate trees than softwood and semi-hardwood cuttings (Saroj et al., 2008). Cultivar is among the factors that determine the rooting ability of pomegranate cuttings (Owais, 2010). In this regard, Hejazi et al. (2023) found that the rooting ability of hardwood cuttingsof pomegranate varied depending on cultivars, and cuttings of pomegranate cultivars responded differently to the rooting inducer. Moreover, Aytekin Polat and Caliskan (2009) observed that rooting rate was different among pomegranate genotypes owing to the differences in parent plant physiological conditions. Apart from these, irrigation frequency is another condition that affects rooting the cuttings (Atak and Yalçın, 2015). In this context, Yeboah et al. (2011) showed variable rooting results in Vitellaria paradoxaGaertn stem cuttings, and they referred that excessive irrigation negatively affected rooting performance. On the other hand, irrigation frequency is crucial for regulating water amount and energy needed for plant production in the nurseries (Hunt and McDonald, 2015). Recognizing the role of genotype and irrigation in the rooting of cuttings, the current study was carried out to estimate rooting capacity in hardwood cuttings of some pomegranate genotypes, and their response to different irrigation frequencies.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/jaeid-13837
Read Full Text: https://www.jaeid.it/index.php/jaeid/article/view/13837
