Vegetative propagation of indigenous fruit trees: influence of defoliation on survival of rooted marcots (air-layered plants) of Irvingia gabonensis and Dacryodes edulis in Onne, Niger Delta Region of Nigeria

Abstract

High mortality is one of the problems limiting production of vegetative planting materials in the nursery. Vegetative propagation by air layering (marcotting) of 12 years old Irvingia gabonensis and Dacryodes edulis was carried out at International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) station in Onne from 1996 to 1997. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of defoliation on survival of rooted marcots of Irvingia gabonensis and Dacryodes edulis. Experiments were conducted with 48 rooted marcots of I. gabonensis and D. edulis. The marcots were set and harvested from mother trees of both species established in an arboretum in 1985. Treatments involved complete removal of all leaves (complete defoliation), removal of half of leaves (partial defoliation) and non-removal of leaves (retention of all leaves in the control treatment). Results indicated that partial defoliation was the most successful treatment with 100 and 66.6% survival percentages for I. gabonensis and D. edulis respectively. Retention of all leaves significantly (P<0.05) resulted in 100 and 46.6% survival of I. gabonensis and D. edulis respectively while the complete defoliation, leafless marcots, had high mortality rate of 58.4% for each of the two species. Partial defoliation treatment is recommended to rural farmers for the improvement and domestication of the two valuable fruit trees.

Keywords: vegetative propagation, ingdigenous fruit trees, rooted marcots Niger Delta, Nigeria

International Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development Vol. 6 2005: 119-125