2019 ASHS Annual Conference

Ginger (Zingiber officinale, Roscoe) is a tropical rhizome crop used as a culinary and medicinal spice, and an antimicrobial agent. It also contains essential oils (volatile oils) and oleoresins which represent the aroma and flavor, respectively, as well as antioxidants. In the northeast USA, the plants are grown in high tunnels to produce baby ginger as a niche crop. Typically, ginger is grown from rhizome pieces, called seed sets, but can also be produced from vegetative plantlets, called “seedlings” derived from mother rhizomes. Since these seedlings have more advanced stem and leaf development than the seed sets, their use in production may accelerate plant development over these rhizome pieces. No information is available on how the seedling method compares with the rhizome piece method in ginger organic culture. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess crop development of organic ginger produced from rhizome pieces and seedlings under different nutrient sources in high tunnel. Three types of propagules; single shoot transplant seedlings derived from 36.5-40.0 gm/rhizome, multiple shoot transplant seedlings derived from 60 -120 g rhizome, and seed sets of 60 -120 g; and 3 nutrient regimes; Cotton seed meal (1,640 lbs./ac.) plus Azomite (8,712 lbs/ac.), Nature Safe (630.7 lbs./ac.) and Phytamin All Purpose Liquid fertilizer (1 gallon/ac.) were used. Nutrient rates were calculated based on ginger nitrogen requirements of 82 lbs./acre. The design was a split plot with nutrient as main plot and type of propagule as subplot and with 4 replications. Plants from seed sets were shortest and had largest number of tillers at harvest at 5 months ( June 21-December 10) after transplanting; those from multi shoot seedlings produced the most rhizomes (381gm/plant), and single shoot seedlings produced the lowest yield (235g). Leaf SPHAD at one, two and three months after transplanting did not differ among the treatment combinations, and ranged from 43 to 46. Phytamin treated plants produced the most tillers while Nature Safe fertilized plants had the least. Fertilizer did not affect yield, which ranged from 343 gm for Phytamin treated plants to 252 gm for Nature Safe plants. These results suggest that for best rhizome yield, selecting seed sets or multiple shoot seedling is a better option than using single shoot seedlings.