“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”, said the White Queen in ‘Alice Through the Looking-glass’. This statement could well apply to many plant propagators in their endeavours to improve the rooting of cuttings. The propagator’s search for chemicals to improve cutting strike has been directed along two lines. Firstly, use of synthetic auxins to increase rooting, and secondly, use of fungicides to reduce losses caused by disease. No systematic treatment of cuttings with fungicide has been done in New Zealand, and consequently this study was undertaken to investigate the effects of various hormone/fungicide combinations on the rooting of cuttings under local conditions, and to assess their value to the nurseryman in a practical context. Dimethysulfoxide (DMSO) has also been used to improve cuttings strike, and hence it was included in this investigation.

In partial fulfilment of the National Diploma in Horticulture of the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture.