Effects of Different Growing Media and Polyethylene Pot Size on Some Morphological Seedling Characteristics of Caper (Capparis ovata Desf.)

Caper (Capparis ovata Desf.) can be used to prevent destruction of the forests by providing an economical source to inhabitant and in order to combate against the soil erosion. The growing healthy and the best quality seedlings is an important issue in plantation and erosion control studies. Seedling morphology is an important indicator to obtain high quality seedlings. The mixtures of different materials such as road slope soil + sand (1:1), forest soil + creek sand + manure (3:1:1), forest soil and road slope soil, and polyethylene pots of different dimensions such as 12-22 cm, 15-23 cm, 19-30 cm were used as seedling growing media and pot in this study. The study was carried out to determine the effects of different seedling growing media and polyethylene pots on some morphological seedling characteristics such as shoot length (SL), root collar diameter (RCD), fresh shoot weight (FSW), dry shoot weight (DSW), fresh root weight (FRW) and dry root weigh (DRW). The experimental design was a randomized complete block with three replications (30 polyethylene pots for each replication) for every treatment under open field conditions. According to statistical analyses (α=0.05), the best SL (167.3 mm) and RCD (2.01 mm) were obtained from the growing media of forest soil + creek sand + manure (3:1:1) with polyethylene pots had 19-30 cm dimension. The best FRW (3.45 g), FSW (1.28 g), DRW (1.36 g) and DSW (0.43 g) were determined from forest soil + creek sand + manure (3:1:1) growing media with the pots had 15-23 cm dimension