Effect of Time of Fertilization and Electrical Conductivity of the Nutrient Solution on Transplantable Stage of Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

The ideal transplanting stage for most of the plants grown hydroponically is 4-leaf stage and it generally takes 4 weeks for the seedlings to reach this stage. Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), however, requires 5 weeks to reach this stage. It would be beneficial to be able to shorten this phase by a few days since it would reduce the time required to complete one production cycle. One approach to achieve this could be manipulation of the nutrient strategy of the seedlings in the nursery phase with an objective to reach an early transplanting stage. This study was conducted to determine the effect of time of fertilization and electrical conductivity (EC) of the nutrient solution on transplanting stage of dandelion. Forty-five seeds of dandelion were sown to conduct this study. There were six treatments for "days to start nutrition" namely, D0(nutrition started on day of sowing), D3(nutrition started three days after sowing), D6, D9, D12 and D15 and two treatments 0.5 and 1.0 dS/m for the EC of the nutrient solution. The data were collected on shoot height,number of days required to reach 2-leaf and 4-leaf stage, number of push-outs and number of leaves after 4 and 5 weeks. The entire experiment was replicated three times. Both the treatments "EC" and "day to start nutrition" had significant effects on the measured plant growth parameters of dandelion. The seedlings grown with treatment combinations D0 x 1.0, D3 x 1.0,D6 x 1.0 and D9 x 1.0 reached the 4-leaf stage in less than 5 weeks and were significantly different from the other treatments. Therefore, the time of fertilization and EC of the solution may hold application in shortening the transplanting phase of dandelion.