Vol. 9, Issue 3 (2020)

Author(s):
Swarnapriya Pradhan and CR Mohanty

Abstract:
An investigation was carried out to study the effect of potting media on growth and quality of two indoor foliage plants, Aglaonema cv. Silver Queen and Dieffenbachia cv. Tropic Snow in form of a pot culture trial in the Department of Horticulture, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar in an agro shade net house with 70 per cent shade during the period between October 2018 to April 2019. The trial was conducted in form of a Factorial Experiment following Completely Randomized Design with three replications and consisted of two factors viz., potting media and in door foliage plants as treatments. In the present investigation five media compositions viz., M₁(2 parts of garden soil+ 1 part of FYM), M₂(2 parts of garden soil + 1 part of coarse sand +1 part of FYM), M₃(2 parts of garden soil +1 part of coco peat ), M₄(2 parts of garden soil +1 part of coarse sand +1 part of coco peat) and M₅ consisting of 2 parts of FYM + 1 part of coco peat were used in which the ingredients were mixed on volume basis. The performances of the two indoor foliage plants, Aglaonema and Dieffenbachia were evaluated in the above mentioned potting media for various growth and quality parameters. The results of the study revealed that growing media played a vital role in influencing these parameters. Among the five potting media used, performances of M₅ composed of 2 parts of FYM + 1 part of coco peat was most satisfactory for pot culture of above two indoor foliage plants irrespective of plant species. The plants grown in this media exhibited better growth and quality in terms of plant height, number of leaves, leaf length, leaf width, number of new leaves emerged per plant per month and visual plant grade of plants Performance of M₄ composed of 2 parts of garden soil +1 part of coarse sand + 1 part of coco peat was next to M₅ with respect to most of the above parameters. On the other hand performance of M₃ (2 parts of garden soil + 1 part of coco peat) was found to be most unsatisfactory which recorded significantly lower values for plant height, number of new leaves emerged and visual plant grade. Besides, M₁(2 parts of garden soil + 1 part of FYM) also exhibited poor performance with respect to some other growth parameters. It recorded lowest values for leaf length and width. However, parameters like number of leaves per plant, leaf length and width were statistically comparable under M₁ and M₃.