Disturbance in apical dominance results in offsets improvement in Sansieveria

The clonal propagation of ornamental plants, especially in chimeric species is very important. Since the only way to propagate chimeric Sansevieria is a rhizome–derived offset propagation, therefore the improvement of the aforementioned clonal propagation method is of prime importance.  For this purpose, in this study, the apical dominance of this species was impaired through the application of 6-Benzylaminopurine (6-BA) and different wounding methods. The experiment was performed under greenhouse conditions and in plastic pots on Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Hahnii’. The results indicated that the use of combination treatment of removal of apical shoots along with foliar application of 50 μM 6-BA significantly increases the number of offsets. This treatment also had a much better effect on improving the height, diameter and weight of offsets than other treatments and control plants. It seems that high concentrations of cytokinin have a negative effect on regeneration and utilizing lower concentrations has a minor effect on inhibiting apical dominance. It is recommended that removal of apical shoots along with exogenous application of 50 μM BA resulted in a 1.5% increase and this treatment is able to increase the number of roots and weight of regenerated offsets twice.