Mycorrhizal Inoculation Improves Plant Growth and Yield of Micropropagated Early Globe Artichoke under Field Conditions

Gaetano Pandino, Sara Lombardo, Antonino Lo Monaco, Claudia Ruta and Giovanni Mauromicale
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Gaetano Pandino: Dipartimento di Agricoltura, Alimentazione e Ambiente (Di3A), Università degli Studi di Catania, Via Valdisavoia 5, 95123 Catania, Italy
Sara Lombardo: Dipartimento di Agricoltura, Alimentazione e Ambiente (Di3A), Università degli Studi di Catania, Via Valdisavoia 5, 95123 Catania, Italy
Antonino Lo Monaco: Dipartimento di Agricoltura, Alimentazione e Ambiente (Di3A), Università degli Studi di Catania, Via Valdisavoia 5, 95123 Catania, Italy
Claudia Ruta: Dipartimento di Scienze Agro Ambientali e Territoriali (DiSAAT), Università degli Studi di Bari, Via G. Amendola 165, 70126 Bari, Italy
Giovanni Mauromicale: Dipartimento di Agricoltura, Alimentazione e Ambiente (Di3A), Università degli Studi di Catania, Via Valdisavoia 5, 95123 Catania, Italy

Agriculture, 2022, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: The micropropagation appears to be a valid alternative method for the production of large-scale, phenotypically homogeneous, and disease-free plants, particularly for spring globe artichoke genotypes. Nevertheless, micropropagated plants have some problems during the acclimatization in field environments. The inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi appeared to overcome the transplanting stress. Therefore, a comparison was drawn between the field performances of different vegetative propagation techniques (micropropagated/mycorrhized and offshoots cultivation) of early globe artichoke clones over two growing seasons. The micropropagation/mycorrhization appeared to deliver a better field performance in terms of both plant growth and productivity traits as compared with offshoots cultivated. In particular, the micropopagated/mycorrhized plants exhibited the highest vegetative growth values than the offshoots of the cultivated ones, such as the plant height and the main floral stem length. The micropopagated/mycorrhized plants were also more productive, exceeding the head yield of offshoots cultivated ones by about 63%. However, the micropopagated/mycorrhized plants accumulated almost a month late on the first harvest respect to offshoots cultivated ones. Our data also showed that the effects of the new proposed propagation method were genotype- and season-dependent. Accordingly, some plant growth and productivity traits showed significant ‘propagation method × genotype’ and ‘propagation method × growing season’ interaction. This study revealed that the micropropagation, as well as the mycorrhization, could represent an efficient and sustainable cropping system to reintroduce and increase the productivity of autochthons landraces.

Keywords: Cynara cardunculus L.; propagation method; genotype; season; sustainable cropping; yield (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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