Morphological Evaluation of Freshwater Ornamental Aquatic Plant Waterwort, Elatine gratioloides A. Cunn under Different Organic Substrate

An investigation was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of different organic substrate on morphological traits of the freshwater ornamental aquatic plant, waterwort Elatine gratioloides in the mud pots of 3.5 L capacity at College of Fisheries, GADVASU, Ludhiana, Punjab for 5 months duration. An experiment was planned in completely randomized design with five treatments viz., control- without manure (T0), Vermi compost (T1), poultry manure (T2), cattle manure (T3) and goat manure (T4) in triplicate to study the effect of organic substrate on growth and development of E. gratioloides. The study revealed that, increase in plant biomass, total plant length and number of leaf and runners was observed in treatments containing high nitrogen content. Comparatively, poultry manure (T2) illustrated superior results and showed significant difference among the treatments, except for the cattle manure (T3). Since cattle manure is easily available in local market at an affordable price; we recommend that its application @ 2% with soil/sand mixture (2:1) helps to increase plant biomass, total plant length and produced good leaf quality for culture and propagation of ornamental aquatic plant waterwort.