Abstract:
Kollankola (Pogostemon heyneanus) is a very important medicinal herb in
indigenous medicine as well as perfumery and soap industry. Kollankola leaves,
stems, flowers, fruits and roots are used for the Ayurvedic preparations and
essential oil production as fresh or dried form. Having insect repellent properties,
this also used for the pesticide preparations. Kollankola generally propagated
through stem cuttings. For the field planting of Kollankola, successfully rooted
stem cuttings are essential. Current market price of dried Kollankola leaves is
about Rs. 150/kg at local markets. However, there is no any systematic
cultivation to fulfill annual Kollankola requirement in Sri Lanka. Availability of
sufficient amount of quality planting materials creates problems in large scale
cultivation of Kollankola. Present study was focused on media, cutting types and
hormone on rooting of Kollankola stem cuttings and thereby improves the
availability of quality planting materials. For this purpose, two separate pot
experiments were carried out at the medicinal plant garden, Faculty of
Agriculture, University of Ruhuna. Experiment I was to select proper potting
mixture for successful rooting of Kollankola stem cuttings. For this experiment,
ten different potting mixtures [such as sand alone, top soil alone, coir dust alone,
mixtures of sand: top soil (1:1), sand: coir dust (1:1), sand: compost (1:1), top soil:
coir dust(1:1), top soil: compost (1:1), sand: compost: coir dust (1:1:1), sand: top
soil: compost (1:1:1)] were used to select proper media for successful rooting.
Experiment II was designed to select suitable cutting type and hormone effect on
rooting of Kollankola stem cuttings. As assign in different treatments, soft wood,
semi hard wood and hard wood cuttings were used with or without Indole
butyric acid (IBA). Results revealed that sand: compost: coir dust (1:1:1) potting
mixture showed the significantly higher (P<0.05) survival percentage, higher
rooted cutting percentage, higher number of roots and higher root length and
3000 mg/L IBA treated semi hardwood cuttings recorded significantly higher
(p<0.05) number of roots, higher root length, higher survival percentage and
higher rooted cuttings percentage. Therefore, IBA treated semi- hardwood stem
cuttings and sand: compost: coir dust (1:1:1) potting mixture could be used to
obtain successfully rooted Kollankola stem cuttings.
