The team I work with in Haiti has been experiementing with asexual propagation of Pigeon Pea. Wilt diseases of pigeon pea have become more prevalent and the availability of disease resistant seed sources is non-existent, so the PHF team has been taking cuttings from a known disease resistant variety.
The have good success with taking terminal 8" cuttings with a rooting hormone dip- also used for propgating citrus rootstocks. Unfortunately, they have not had any success without using rooting hormone
The issue is that rooting hormone is not readily available and due to the political crisis that prevents shipping anything or traveling in country they are alooking for alternatives.
Unverified reports have suggested aloe vera or watered down honey may act as a rooting agent. Does anyone have any suggestions?
@Gordon_Clark We’ve had some recent success with aloe as a rooting hormone for soil rooted plants. I don’t have the stats on it, but will check back with the fellow who did the experiment and let you know his results.
I did a search on ChatGPT putting in your information. It seems to mention a good approach that starts with getting the soil tested. That might be difficult in your situation, but it seems like the best approach for coming up with a workable plan.
We had a very similar problem in Kathmandu, Nepal. Nothing would grow…the soil was compacted and just did not seem to have any life in it.
I could pass on the ChatGPT if you are interested. You might find some very practical information from it.
Gordon, we have good success using aloe vera. We grow aloe vera specially for that purpose so as to have it available when needed.
Air ayering is also easy and produces fast growing starts because they already have roots. We do it all the time when propagating trees that we are unable to find. So, for example, we have an avocado tree that is a great producer and great tasting but nobody knows the variety. Air layering allows us to have more of that desirable tree. Also, I think air layering produces an exact replica of the mother plant. So I guess it is similar to cloning in terms of the end result.
Blessings,
Glen
Yes the PHF team in Haiti has air layered many plants. They are looking for a quicker way to produce disease resistant plants. I have had other comments about using aloe. How is it applied? Is it just wiped onto the basal end?
Thanks all.
@Gordon_Clark Here is what my friend said about his son’s observations. I will let you know if we have similar results from future randomized trials. Hope this helps! Let us know what works for you or what you would like us to trial.
“Unfortunately he didn’t keep great notes on it since he was gone for a while during that time but just from observing it here are the results. He propagated cuttings of tropical apricot. He tried a control, one with commercial rooting hormone, and one with Aloe. He did 15 cuttings in each rep. Initially the commercial hormone out performed the others, quickly leafing out much faster than the control or aloe reps. Over time the aloe rep started looking better than the control but not as impressive as the commercial hormone. After more time suddenly the commercial hormone suffered nearly total collapse. The control also suffered significant die off. This is where the Aloe rep really shined with minimal die off. The trial got tucked away and neglected and through neglect many of the Aloe rep cuttings continued to survive while all the commercial hormone rep and the control died off. My hypothesis is that commercial hormone is too powerful, actually causing too rapid of growth for small cuttings to maintain, causing initial impressive growth but a lack of long term resilience. Its possible it works better for other plant species however. Aloe really does seem to do wonders for cuttings. [He] has been conducting more backyard experiments of hard to propagate ornamental cuttings and the ones he uses Aloe on always do better than the cuttings he puts straight in the ground. He doesn’t do anything special with the Aloe, he just picks an Aloe leaf and spreads the gel on the bottom of the cutting before planting.”
In terms of, how do we apply it. We have used two techniques and they both work well though the second technique seems to have a little better quality control because you know you’re applying the liquid. Our first technique was just to cut the aloe and rub it on the end of the cutting. The second technique was to chop up the aloe into small pieces in a bowl and wait a little bit for the liquid to accumulate in the bottom of the bowl. Then we used a small paint brush to apply it to the cutting ends.
However, with most of our cuttings, we don’t use anything and have good success. That is, neither commercial hormone powder nor aloe.
The team did an experiment comparing commercial hormone vs no hormone. Their observations on pigeon peas, was the hormone worked and the control didn’t. The formation of callus tissues and subsequent root development is plant specific, i.e. you can stick a branch of moringa in the ground and it will root…not so much on other plants. On another note, does anyone in Southern Haiti have access to scion wood for seedless mangos?
Well, just for the fun of it, today we tried a few cuttings without using anything on them. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any good young strong plants. The few we had were old ones, but we were able to get a couple of younger cuttings off of them. Tried a little different technique with cutting and also with planting style. Will let you know if we have any success.
Gordon, reporting back to you of our success rooting pigeon pea cuttings without the use of hormone.
We had an overall success rate of 67%. Had 100% success with terminal cuttings and 50% with other cuttings that were further down the branch below the terminal cutting.
Two things we did that account for that level of success even though we did not have nice young plants to take cuttings from and did not use hormone.
One we used a different cutting technique of cutting the bottom at a sharp angle and also scraping the bark off of two areas. That technique can be seen in our little video at this URL. Teaching Materials - Art for Humanity It is the first video in the list.
Secondly, as we often do with difficult to root cuttings, we placed the cuttings in a “tent”. That is, we planted cuttings in a bucket and then placed the bucket in a plastic bag that formed a tent over the cuttings to keep the cuttings from drying out. We keep the bag closed for about a week. These cuttings began forming new leaves in about 10 days.
Hopefully this helps you to have more success when hormone is not available.