Rooting Comparison of Different Tamarix Ecotypes Native to Ardabil Province Under Various Hormonal Treatments

Environmental stresses could cause changing in plants growth and development. Drought stress is one of the most common stresses that threaten a large part of the world’s lands. Tamarix is a native plant to Iran which could tolerate different environmental stresses. This plant is very suitable for use in the landscape. This study was performed as a factorial experiment in a completely randomized design to investigate the effects of ecotype and hormone type on the rooting of tamarix cuttings native to Ardabil province, with 10 replications. In this research, the measured traits included branch number, branch length, primary root number, primary root length, longest root length, plant height, rooting percentage, branch fresh weight, branch dry weight, and root fresh and dry weight. The results of the analysis of variance showed that ecotype significantly (P≤0.01) affected all measured indices except root dry weight and branch fresh weight. The results of the also revealed that the interaction effects of ecotype and hormone on rooting percentage, branch number and plant height were significant at the 1% probability level. Means comparison showed that the highest and lowest rooting percentage were obtained from ecotypes 6 and 7, respectively. Although, the Indole Botyric Acid hormone affected all measured indices better than the Indole Acetic Acid, there were no significant differences between them. In general, this study showed that, in most investigated traits, ecotypes 4, 5 and 6 were the strongest ecotypes, which could be introduced as the most successful ecotypes for future adaptation studies.