Effect of selected substrates and chitosan on growth performance of orchid tissue culture seedling under net house

Abstract

Orchids are considered as the most beautiful and significant cut blossom and pruned plants throughout the world. Therefore tissue culture technique was used as one of the alternative to mass propagate the orchids to fulfil the demand. This study was conducted to find out the effect of chitosan and different substrates on growth performance of Dendrobium Shavin White orchid seedling from tissue culture environment to net house. The tissue cultured plants went through prehardening stage to reduce mortality after the switch to ex vitro conditions. Five (5) treatments consist of combination substrates were tested which were T1: rice husk + chitosan, T2: peat moss + chitosan, T3: EFB + chitosan, T4: rice husk + peat moss + chitosan and T5: rice husk + peat moss + EFB + chitosan whereas charcoal as a control (T0). The result showed that the highest plant height and leaf length which did not significantly different were T3 (6.20cm plant height, 4.83cm leaf length), and T5 (6.55cm plant height, 4.51cm leaf length). Meanwhile, T3 was an effective for number of leaf production with 4.14 leaf count. Hence, this data will be used to acclimatize tissue cultured of Dendrobium Shavin White orchid for commercial used.