Abstract:
One of the common fruit crops planted in Sri Lanka is the avocado (Persea americana
Mill.). Main propagation technique for Avocado is grafting. It's crucial to produce
strong and in good health root stocks for plants to live longer. Improved efficiency of
avocado seed germination in nurseries through seed scarification techniques are
important.
Therefore, this study aimed to find out suitable growing media and technique to
produce avocado root stock. This experiment was conducted from January to April
2023 at Fruit Crop Research and Development Institute, Kananwila. Pre- germination
treatment was performed as 1/3 Top cut seeds. Full seeds were used as control. The
media was prepared with Sand: Soil: Compost at a ratio of 1/2:1:1, 1:1:1 and 2:1:1
respectively as potting media. Six treatments with 360 replicates were arranged in a
Completely Randomized Design in a sand bed nursery.
The parameters measured during the experiment were percentage of seed germination,
Plant height, stem girth root length, root weight and root volume. Data were checked
for normal distribution by using suitable descriptive statistical method. Analysis of
variance (ANOVA) is used to compare the effect of treatment combinations by using
SAS version 6.122 The result showed that without top cut seed significantly (p<0.05)
increased the growth of avocado when compared to the 1/3 top cut seed treatment
method. Potting media of sand : soil : compost with the ratio of 2:1:1 respectively
showed better growth performances in nursery plants compared to all other
treatments. Further, it was noted that this treatment took less number of days for
avocado root stock production.
