Developing an Effective Vegetative Propagation Method for Commercial Cultivation in Gurmar Plant (Gymnema sylvestre)

Abstract

Gurmar (Gymnema sylvestre) is an uncommon Ayurvedic medicinal plant with immense medicinal properties. It can be classified as a perennial woody vine. That grows in the tropical forests of central, western, and southern India and the tropical regions of Africa, Australia, and China. This vine is widely used in indigenous medicine in the treatment of diabetes. As it is a rare plant with valuable medicinal properties that can treat other diseases besides diabetes, it is essential to obtain optimum and high-quality yield of Gurmar. However, there is still no specific cost-effective vegetative propagation method for Gurmar. Therefore, this study aimed to introduce a cost effective vegetative propagation method to obtain optimal and sustainable production. The study consisted of 3 stem cutting types of G. sylvestre (softwood, semi-hardwood, and hardwood) raised in 6 different potting media (sand, topsoil, coir dust, sand+coir dust, top soil+coir dust, sand+top soil+coir dust) and treated with hormones (Indole-3-Butryric Acid (IBA) 0.31% (CLONEX) and without hormones. The study aimed at the vegetative growth of the plants. The experiment was carried out in a three-factor factorial design with each treatment combination thirty-six (6 x 3 x 2) with ten replicates of G. sylvestre cuttings. The whole amount of single-type vegetative propagators is 360 (per 10 replicates). To analyze the data of Number of leaves, Number of new shoots, Root length, new shoot length, and Root volume data were analyzed using the ANOVA test, and the mean separation was done using Tukey’s test. Minitab 19 was used as the statistical software. Significant differences were separated by Tukey’s multiple range tests with a 5% level of probability. The survival rate percentage and growth rate of Gurmar cuttings at 12 WAP were evaluated. According to the results, the best survival rate percentages or significantly the highest growth rate were T15 (hardwood, with D.D.N. Vibodhani, Department of Agriculture Faculty of Technology SLTC Research University Padukka, Sri Lanka nisansalav@sltc.ac.lk R.M.P.I. Rajapaksha, Department of Agriculture Faculty of Technology SLTC Research University Padukka, Sri Lanka isharar@sltc.ac.lk R.M.S.M.B. Rathnayaka, Department of Agriculture Faculty of Technology SLTC Research University Padukka, Sri Lanka sangeethr@sltc.ac.lk hormone, coir dust), T27 (semi-hardwood, without hormone, coir dust), and T33 (hardwood, without hormone, coir dust). According to the results, coir dust potting media was in treatments T15, T27, and T33, which showed the highest growth. This experiment further confirms coir dust potting media that is most suitable for the growth of the Gurmar plant. This finding can be developed for further research i.e. T33 treatment can be used effectively in the maintenance of large scale G. sylvestre plantati