Effect of Pot Sizes and Coffee Cultivars on Emergence and Subsequent Seedling Growth of Coffee (Coffea Arabica L.), South Western Ethiopia

Abstract

Currently, due to lack of technology based information the same polythene bag size (pot size) are used to raise Arabica coffee cultivars seedlings at different coffee nursery site, so it requires sound study at coffee nursery and field transplanting for improved productivity. Therefore, an experiment was conducted at Bonga in 2011/13 period to determine the effect of different pot sizes (11cm diameter by 23 cm height, 6cm diameter by 12 cm height and 8cm diameter by 20 cm height) on the growth performance of Coffea arabica cultivars (75227, 741, 7440, Dessu, 74110 and 74112). The experimental design was randomized complete block design with three replications. Analysis of variance revealed that there was significant (p<0.05) difference among pot sizes in seedling vigor index, plant height, internode length, leaf area index, leaf dry weight, stem dry weight, root volume, total dry weight, shoot mass ratio, tap root length, relative growth rate, specific leaf area and leaf area ratio. However, mean day of emergence, percent emergence, emergence rate, number of internodes per plant, girth, leaf number per plant, lateral root number, lateral root length, root to shoot ratio and  field survival  percentage after transplanting were not significantly (p<0.05) affected by the main effect of pot sizes. In general all the parameters were significantly (p<0.05) affected by the main effect of variety. Arabica coffee cultivars 74110, 74112, 7440 and Dessue were revealed the highest field survival percentage 97.94%, 93.83%, 97.20% and 94.43% after field transplanting, respectively. On the other hand open Arabica coffee cultivars 741 and 75227 showed lower field survival (70.89%) and (71.78%), respectively. Generally, a great contribution for the highest field survival percentage of Arabica coffee after field transplanting was obtained from the three pot sizes that undertaken for this study, however there was no significance different among pot sizes. Finally, coffee seedling grown under smaller pot size (6 cm X 12cm) preferred for field transplanting, because coffee producing farmers would able to transport a large number coffee seedlings grown under smaller pot size for field transplanting than larger pot size.  Therefore, application of smaller pot size could be recommended as a practically approved choice-for-the-study-area.

Keywords: coffee, cultivar, pot size, relative growth rate, survival rate, transplanting,