Effect of Leaf Area on Rooting of Soft – Wood Cuttings of the Citrus Lemon Variety Meyer
Soft–wood cuttings of the Citrus lemon variety Meyer with different leaf areas were vegetatively propagated under greenhouse conditions, at Deraa Research Station, in 2006 and 2007.
Five treatments were used in the experiment:
* Treatment 1 : cuttings were planted without leaves;
* Treatment 2 : cuttings containing three complete leaves were planted;
*Treatment 3 : cuttings with 50% of the area of the upper two leaves removed were planted; 
*Treatment 4 : cuttings containing 2 terminal leaves were planted;
* Treatment 5 : cuttings with 50% of the area of the upper three leaves removed were planted.
The rooting percentage reached 97.1% after two months for Meyer cuttings treated with 100mg/L IBA for twelve hours, while the rooting percentage for the control was 89.2%.
In the growing of the root and leave groups, the seedlings produced from three complete leaves cuttings had exceeded all the rest of the treatments.The average of the length of the plant have reached 35.1 cm and the sum of the length of the shoots of first and second ranks have reached 53.1 cm.
The number of first rank roots for the plants grown from cuttings containing three leaves were 9.4 roots for the second treatment.
The total length of first rank roots for plants grown from cuttings containing three leaves was 235.4 cm, while it was 125.5 cm in the control.
Leave area of plants originating from cuttings containing three complete leaves was 199.95% higher than the control.