Seasonal Variation in Clonal Propagation Performance among Dendrocalamus stocksii (Munro) Accessions

Abstract

The investigation was conducted at the ICFRE–Institute of Wood Science and Technology (IWST), Forest Research Station, Gottipura, Hoskote Taluk, Bengaluru Rural, Karnataka, India to evaluate the clonal propagation efficiency of 59 accessions of Dendrocalamus stocksii (Munro) during winter and summer seasons. The experiment was conducted separately during winter (December 2023–February 2024) and summer (March–May 2024) using a Randomized Block Design (RBD), with 59 accessions evaluated under nursery conditions. Each treatment consisted of uniform culm cuttings maintained under controlled nursery conditions. Analysis of variance conducted separately for each season revealed significant (p<0.05) differences among accessions for sprouting percentage, number of shoots node^-1, shoot length at 30, 60 and 90 days, shoot diameter at 90 days, root length at 90 days, and number of roots at 90 days. Descriptively, propagation performance was higher during summer, with a mean sprouting percentage of 58.72% compared with 51.96% during winter. Considerable variation among accessions was observed for shoot and root development traits in both seasons, indicating substantial phenotypic variation in clonal propagation performance.  The results highlight the importance of selecting an appropriate propagation season for optimizing propagation success and provide a useful basis for identifying promising D. stocksii accessions and improving clonal propagation practices for nursery production and germplasm utilization.