Macropropagation of an endangered medicinal plant, strychnos heningsii (gilg), (loganiaceae) for sustainable conservation

Strychnos henningsii (Gilg), (Logoniaceae), is an important medicinal plant that is facing threat of extinction in Kenya owing to indiscriminate and unsustainable harvesting in the wild. The wide scale use of this species resulted to its over-exploitation by the herbalists, hotels, restaurants owners and the local people. Effects of growth hormones, rooting substrates, leaf area and nodal position on stem cuttings of S. henningsii were investigated. Six hundred and sixty nodal cuttings were obtained from Kabiruini forest in Central Kenya. Uniform cuttings from two different nodal positions and with different lamina area were planted in three different media and treated with different auxins. Cuttings were assessed for percentage survival, percentage rooting, number of roots per cutting and the length of the longest root per cutting. ANOVA was carried out on the data collected and LSD at 5% probability level used to compare significantly different means. Mean percentage survival of 67.31% was recorded with whole leaf cuttings from the apical node. The highest mean value of 5.86 in the number of roots per rooted cutting was recorded with Seradix 2 powder. Leaf size had a highly significant effect on the rooting of cuttings as whole leaf rooted better than half leaves.

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