Abstract:
Black pepper (Piper nigrum L.) is the most used spice in the world because it has
more uses while it is the most economically important spice that is cultivated in Sri
Lanka due to premium price in the international spice trade. Intercropping with tea
and coconut and monocrop cultivations are practised by Sri Lankan farmers.
However, initial pruning on black pepper vines is not a common practice among
farmers which resulted in incomplete canopy filling and low plagiotropic branches
at the lower part of canopy causing lower yield. Therefore, the present study was
conducted with the objective of evaluating the effectiveness of initial pruning and
training practices on increasing the number of orthotropic and plagiotropic
branches in the canopy. Planting material originated from ground runners were
used in Randomized Complete Block Design with five replicates and four treatments
as Ground runner (without pruning or training as control), Pruned only, Trained
only and Trained and Pruned pepper plants. Pruning of pepper vines was done at
the 70 cm height level and training of pepper vines was done using coiling and
burying around the supports. After a two and half month period the number of
plagiotropic branches from Trained and Pruned (12±1.68) followed by Trained only
(11±0.76), Ground runner (7±0.39) and Pruned only (5±0.44) pepper plants
respectively was reported. The reported orthotropic branches for Trained and
Pruned, Pruned only, Trained only and Ground runner pepper plants were 4±0.31,
4±0.38, 2±0.17 and 2±0.24, respectively. The highest number of leaves (95±12.51)
and total orthotropic shoot length (98.14cm±14.91) were also reported from
Trained and Pruned pepper plants. According to the results, it was clear that
Trained and Pruned pepper plants showed better performance for all growth
parameters as compared to other treatments. Therefore, it can be concluded that
training and pruning of ground runner pepper plants at the initial stages is more
beneficial for having more number of orthotropic and plagiotropic branches.
