Castoriano, M., ARO, Volcani Center, P.O. Box 6, Bet-Dagan 50250, Israel
Reuveni, O., ARO, Volcani Center, P.O. Box 6, Bet-Dagan 50250, Israel

Etiolation applied to stock plants was found to increase rooting of difficult- to-root cuttings including mango. Basically it includes sequential treatments of forcing growth of new shoots in the dark followed by growing in the light before using them as cuttings. In order to develop a procedure for mass propagation there was a need to solve some major problems, such as forcing shoot development in the dark and etiolation at the basal section of the shoot during the light phase, prerequisite for successful rooting. Out of experiments conducted, the main successful results are listed. Container grown stock plants were transferred to a dark room (20°C) in order to induce shoot development. Before the dark period (7-10 days) the following treatments were applied: I) branches and shoots were cut back, II) axillary buds were smeared with a lanoline paste containing BA (500 mg/l) and GA3 (100 mg/I), III) transfer was done after bud swelling. Twenty four hours before transferring back to the light (50%), the basal section of the shoots was painted with a water soluble PVA to which activated charcoal was added. In further experiments base etiolated cuttings rooted faster, at a higher rate than the control, with more roots per cutting. In one difficult-to-root clone, 100% of base etiolated cuttings rooted as compared to 4% of the control. © ISHS.