Coimbatore, June 24 (PTI): The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University here has come out with effective technology for rooting of bamboo with a high success rate without the need for costly and advanced infrastructure like mist chambers, making it the simplest technology available to multiply bamboo on a commercial scale.

Being a very simple technique, it can be easily followed by farmers, without any help of technical experts, a TNAU press release said here on Sunday.

The technology, developed using the entire culm without rooting hormone treatment and achieving 90 per cent rooting, was released for the benefit of bamboo growers yesterday.

On the details, one has to remove one year old culm from matured mother culm at 5-10 years growth stage, without damaging both culm and mother culm. The removed culm should be delimbed carefully by leaving growing buds in the nodes.

The culm should then be placed in the raised nursery bed and covered with loose soil and sand mixture for half an inch thickness. After providing adequate shade to the culms with coconut sheaths or rice straw, watering should be done to field capacity.

Watering twice a day should be continued and shoot emergence would be observed after one month from all buds in all nodes of the entire culm. With continuous watering upto 3 months, root emergence could be observed in 2-3 months.

After rooting, the rooted culm should be removed entirely from the soil without damage. To help uprooting the rooted culms without damage, watering should be done.

Each rooted node with shoots should be separated with a small hand saw and the separated cutting can be transferred to polybags.

Bamboos are versatile trees, which flower only once in its life cycle (40-60 years) and the death is popularly known as parthenogenesis, the release said.

Hence seed availability is very less. At the same time the seeds are less viable. This difficulty promoted bamboo propagation through two nodal culm cutting with rooting hormone treatment. This conventional technique accounts only for less than 25 per cent success rate.

On camparison of economics, the TNAU claimed that while existing technology would cost Rs 15,756 for 100 seedlings, including a fixed cost of Rs 8089 and a variable cost of Rs 7667, the improved technology would cost Rs 10,679, with Rs 2704 as fixed cost and Rs 7975 as variable cost.

The total revenue with the improved technology would be Rs 14,000 as against Rs 8750 with existing technology, with added returns of 200 seedlings at the rate of Rs.35, reducing the cost by Rs 5077. The net gain using improved technology would be Rs 12,077, it claimed.

Since the technology does not involve chemical treatment, it is not only cost effective, but also environmentally friendly. It can be safely used for large-scale multiplication of bamboo for a 90 per cent success rate, the release claimed.