REGULATION OF CHRYSANTHEMUM GROWTH USING GA₃ AND ALAR TO OVERCOME SALINITY DEPRESSIONS

Chrysanthemum moxifolium Ramat is a new source of essential oil in addition to it's uses as cut flower or pot plant. A pot experiment was conducted for 2 successive seasons at the experimental farm of Assiut University, to study the effect of spraying GA₃ and alar to overcome salinity depression on growth and flowering of the new cultivar "Westland Pink". The experiment was arranged in a split-split plot design, with 4 replicates. The treatments were distributed as follows: 4 salinity levels (control, 2000, 4000 and 5000 p.p.m. salts) as main plots, 3 alar concentration (0, 500 and 1000 ppm) as sub-plots and 3 levels of GA₃ (0, 50 and 100 ppm) as sub-sub plots. The obtained data were subjected to Statistical analysis, and the main effects were summarized.

Watering with saline water at 5000 p.p.m. salts caused reductions 18.2% of plant height, 37.9% of plant fresh weight, 31.4% in root dry weight, 19.0% in inflorescence number/plant, 14.8% in peduncle length and 11% in infl. diameter.

Spraying of GA₃ stimulated both growth and flowering, particularly at 100 ppm, it increased plant height 9.8%, plant fresh weight by 16%, root dry weight 8.6%, infl. number/plant by 7.5% and peduncle length by 10% of the control.

Alar spraying reduced plant height and unaffected flowering characteristics.