Potted Artichoke Seedling Propagation by Using Different Vegetative Materials and Techniques

Abstract

In Turkey studies are made to overcome/repair the sparseness of perennial artichoke plantations. By the planting of offshoots, dormant stumps or dormant stump pieces on the place of dead plants procedures have been adopted by the growers. These methods will be not fully successfully due to the potential wilting of newly planted offshoots, late awakening of the dormant stumps, or pieces of dormant stumps and also being in competition with the older more established neighbouring plants resulting in a heterogenic plantation in terms of growth. In this study, the potential of different planting materials for obtaining potted sprouted seedlings, which were thought to be more efficient to regenerate the old artichoke plantations during the vegetation period, was investigated. The study was held in a grower field in Seferihisar town of Izmir in 2011. Two artichoke cultivars ('Sakiz' and 'Bayrampasa') were used. The influence of (i) three different pot volumes, (ii) five different dormant stump pieces (in terms of sizes and/or typologies used) and (iii) the humic acid application before rooting were assessed. The investigated criteria were: 1) percentage of the rooted plants with respect to the number of vegetative materials planted in different volumes of pots and treated with humic acid or not; 2) quality of seedlings propagated by these techniques; 3) survival percentage of these one month old seedlings and dormant stump pieces after their plantation in the field. While no statistical effect determined from humic acid applications was observed, higher pot and stump sizes gave higher results. Different results were also obtained from different stump types in terms of rooting ratios and some seedling quality. With this study, satisfactory rates were obtained in terms of produced seedling ratios (86.9-100%) and their survival performance in the field (95-100%).