Growth, Morphology, and Quality of Rooted Cuttings of Several Herbaceous Annual Bedding Plants Are Influenced by Photosynthetic Daily Light Integral During Root Development

Abstract

Cuttings of herbaceous annual bedding plants must be rooted in late winter and early spring when ambient outdoor photosynthetic daily light integrals (DLIs) are at seasonally low levels. We evaluated the effect of DLI during root development on growth, morphology, and quality of nine popular vegetatively propagated annual bedding plant species. Cuttings of Angelonia angustifolia Benth. ‘AngelMist White Cloud’, Argyranthemum frutescens (L.) Sch. Bip. ‘Madeira Cherry Red’, Diascia barberae Hook. f. ‘Wink Coral’, Lantana camara L. ‘Lucky Gold’, Nemesia fruticans (Thunb.) Benth. ‘Aromatica Royal’, Osteospermum ecklonis (DC.) Norl. ‘Voltage Yellow’, Scaevola L. hybrid ‘Blue Print’, Sutera cordata Roth. ‘Abunda Giant White’, and Verbena Ruiz ×hybrida ‘Aztec Violet’ were harvested and propagated in a glass-glazed greenhouse with 23 °C air and substrate temperature set points. After callusing (≈5 mol·m−2·d−1 for 7 days), cuttings of each species were placed under one of three different fixed-woven shade cloths providing ≈38%, 61%, or 86% shade or no shade with 16 h of supplemental light for 14 days. There were no clear trends across species for stem length in response to DLI. Stem caliper of Argyranthemum, Diascia, and Nemesia increased by 35%, 119%, and 89%, respectively, as DLI increased from 1.2 to 12.3 mol·m−2·d−1. Depending on species, total, shoot, and root dry mass increased by 64% to 465%, 50% to 384%, and 156% to 1137%, respectively, as DLI increased from 1.2 to 12.3 mol·m−2·d−1. The quality index, an objective, integrated, and quantitative measurement of rooted cutting quality, increased for all species by 176% to 858% as DLI increased from 1.2 to 12.3 mol·m−2·d−1. Our results indicate that providing a DLI of ≈8 to 12 mol·m−2·d−1 after callusing increases both growth and quality of rooted cuttings.