Biology of the seedling of the sandle wood (Santalum album Linn.)

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in the College of Forestry, Vellanikkara during July 1990 to March 1991. The investigation was undertaken with a view to studying the biology of sandal seedling (Santalum album Linn.). The main objective of the experiment was to study the influence of host plants on the growth and development of sandal and to identify promising sandal – host combinations to be recommended and adopted for large scale plantations. The experiment was laid out in a completely Randomised Design with 15 host species as treatments. The results revealed that sandal has host specificity and with certain host species sandal tended to put up better growth. Casuarina was found to be the best host among the 15 host species tried in the experiment. All the growth characters like height, collar girth, number of leaves, root and shoot biomass, root and shoot length were higher when sandal was associated with host species like casuarina, terminalia, albizia, dalbergia, pongamia. On the other hand some species like emblica, delonix, acacia, ailanthus, lucaena had an antagonistic or allelopathic effect. A multitrait selection index was developed for the 15 host species tried in the investigation and five sandal –host combinations have been identified for recommendation for large scale sandal plantations.