Influence of IBA levels on rooting, growth, physiological traits and survival of different seedless lemon (Citrus limon (L.) Burm. f.) cuttings

The experiment was conducted at Fruit Research Station Imaliya, Department of Horticulture, JNKVV, Jabalpur (M.P.) in 3 x 4 Factorial Randomized Block Design (FRBD) consisting of 12 treatments with 3 replications. Factor-A had three levels of cuttings (hardwood, semi hardwood, soft wood cuttings and factor-B had four levels of IBA (0, 2000, 3000 and 4000 ppm). Citrus limon (L.) can be propagated successfully through stem cutting. Hence, this experiment was conducted to find out the effectivity of IBA levels on growth and success of cuttings. Among factor-A, hardwood (A1) showed the significantly better results and soft wood (A3) showed the low performance. Among factor-B, IBA @ 3000 ppm showed the significantly better results and IBA @ 0 ppm showed the lowest performance. However, treatment combination T4 (hardwood cutting + IBA @ 4000 ppm) showed the minimum days to start sprouting (4 days) and light transmission ratio (80.00%, 65.67% and 62.67%) at 60, 90, 120 days respectively. Maximum number of shoots per cuttings (2.27 and 2.67) at 60 and 120 days after planting, survival percentage of cutting (83.33%), fresh weight of shoot (16.47 g), dry weight of shoot (6.73 g), total fresh weight of plant (19.17 g), total dry weight plant (7.30 g), fresh weight of root (2.70 g), dry weight of root (0.57 g) at 120 days. Leaf area index (0.91, 3.09 and 4.34), leaf area duration (60.00 and 111.46) (between 60 to 90 and 90 to 120 days), chlorophyll content index (56.10, 65.20 and 51.37) was also recorded maximum at 60, 90, 120 days after planting respectively in T4 (hardwood cutting + IBA @ 4000 ppm).