Abstract:
This research was carried out to investigate the influence of nursery management on clonal propagation of Pterocarpus mildbraedii for integration into farming systems. The stems that were used for this experiment were collected from the mother tree of Pterocarpus mildbraedii within the premises of Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. The stems collected were later cut into two different length of stem cuttings which were 15 cm and 20 cm. The two different length of stem cuttings were planted in polythene pots that were filled with three different sowing media (topsoil; humus and topsoil; sawdust) and distributed to three levels of light quality (full shade; full light; moderate shade). The design of experiment was a factorial experiment in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) at five replicates per treatment. The morphological parameters: plant height and number of leaves were monitored and assessed for a period of 45 days. The results obtained show that the two different lengths of stem cuttings had a significant difference (P<0.05) in both the plant height and number of leaves. However, 20 cm length of stem cuttings had the early sprouting and growth. The 20 cm length of stem cuttings had higher mean values of plant height of 9.40 cm, 7.70cm and 6.35cm and number of leaves of 20.67cm, 10.50cm and 8.50cm. The results conducted on the effect of sowing media on plant height and number of leaves showed that topsoil had higher mean values under full shade (9.40cm) (20.67cm), full light (9.60cm) (13.00cm) and moderate shade (9.55cm) (13.00cm) respectively. There was a significant difference (P<0.05) between the values obtained from the sowing media. Topsoil was recorded to be the best sowing media. Also, the result obtained from the study shows that the light quality performed almost the same way on the plants; as there was no significant difference in the effect of the light quality on the plants. It is therefore recommended that 20 cm length of stem cutting planted in topsoil should be used in propagating Pterocarpus mildbraedii in
the nursery. The result of the proximate analysis clearly shows that the leaves of Pterocarpus mildbraedii have high nutritional value. Pterocarpus mildbraedii had high significant concentration of moisture content (60.59±2.11), ash content (2.91±0.03), crude fibre (11.03±0.07), fat (2.01±0.02), and crude protein (15.75±0.91).
