Variation for Rooting Response of Hardwood Cuttings in Cinnamomum zeylanicum Blume

Efficient delivery of improved and tested germplasm in a clonally propagated tree is often influenced by tree-to-tree variation for vegetative propagation.Though cinnamon is a very important and one of the oldest known tree spices of India, individual level and seed source level variations for rooting response of stem cuttings are not very well understood.An experiment was carried out at the College of Forestry, Sirsi, UAS, Dharwad during 2019-20 in which stem cuttings from 90 morphologically superior mother trees from five different geographical sources were tested for their rooting ability in a structured experiment.Not all mother trees produced rooted cuttings.Overall, significant tree-to tree variation was observed with respect to rooting per cent (range: 20.00 to 50.00 per cent), number of shoots, number of roots and number of leaves per cutting.However, the rooting ability was not influenced by the seed-source.Per cent rooting and number of roots per cutting were positively associated suggesting that mother trees that showed good rooting abilities tended to produce larger root biomass.Differences among mother trees for rooting ability of stem cuttings is neither contributed by the age of the mother tree, nor its girth / girth of the stem cuttings used for the experimentation, pointing to the genetic influence.It is suggested to include rooting ability as an important trait while selecting the superior types in cinnamon.