The Use of Colour Shade Material in Black Pepper (Piper nigrum L) Propagation

Abstract

Black pepper (Piper nigrum L.), is the second most important spice crop grown in Sri Lanka, having the potential of generating substantial foreign exchange earnings. Black pepper is grown as an intercrop with tea and coconut. Black pepper is commercially propagated through stem cuttings. In the traditional propagation method, coir netting is used as the shading material and it takes 5 months to plant in the field. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to find the correct shading to reduce the nursery period and to improve the quality of planting material by using coloured high-quality flame retardant, heavy- duty lock stitch knit, black, green and blue coloured shade fabric specifically for shade covers of 50 and 75% shade. The longest shoot length of 8.1 cm, highest fresh weight of 121 mg, highest dry weights of 18.1 mg, highest number of roots of 21 per plant, total root length of 13 cm per plant and highest root dry weight of 2.5 mg at 90 days were recorded in the treatment 50% blue shade. Therefore, the use of 50% blue shading material in pepper commercial nurseries provides better growth of pepper nursery plants.