Vol. 5, Issue 1, Part B (2023)

The slow growth of parkia biglobosa (Jacq (Benth)) bean has continued to posed a great challenge to the conservators and silviculturist. This study was carried out to determine the hormonal influence of gibberellin and auxin on the early growth of parkia biglobosa under nursery condition. The experiment lasted for eight (8) weeks, where the number of leaves on the plants, the plants height and collar diameter were determined. Complete Randomized Design (CRD) was used for the conduction of the experiment. The experiment had three (3) treatments; T1 (gibberellin), T2 (auxin) and T3 (control) with fifteen (15) replicates per treatment. The growth parameters measured were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA). The result from the experiment showed that the growth hormones had significant influence (p<0.05) only on the number of leaves with no significant effect (p>0.05) on plant height and collar diameter. The Least Significant Difference (LSD) (p≥0.05) was carried out for the number of leaves and the result showed that the treatment were significantly different from one another. This study therefore showed that the performance of parkia biglobosa can be improved when the seeds are treated with growth hormones at early stages as observed in the increase of number of leaves, however the limitation of the species makes the influence of the growth hormones not to be fully expressed on plant height and collar diameter.