Effect of some agricultural media on rooting rates and roots measurements of softwood of olive cultivar "Al-Qaisi" in controlled conditions

Abstract

The study was conducted in the greenhouse of (ACSAD) in Lattakia (Bouqa) to propagation of the olive cultivar "Al-Qaisi" by softwood using different agricultural media during the years 2022-2023. Planting took place during two dates (summer, autumn), in different medians (coarse perlite, normal perlite, fine perlite, coarse pumice, normal pumice, fine pumice), each experiment had several treatments, each with 5 replicates and in each replicate 50 cuttings. The results showed that the autumn planting date was superior to the summer in the total rooting percentage (47.85%, 41.08%) respectively, the same applies to date rooted cuttings, as the autumn planting date gave better results than the summer, with the lowest percentage of dead cutting after rooting (0.16%, 10.73%) respectively. Coarse perlite gave the highest value in total rooting percentage (54.54%), For the dead cutting after rooting coarse pumice gave the best result (1.71%). The highest value for the average number of roots per cutting was in coarse perlite and normal perlite (22.89, 22.55 root/cutting) respectively, As, fine pumice gave the best result for the average root lengths per cutting (2.28 cm).