Abstract:

It is especially important to select culture media in planting orchid and a better culture media can provide the theories for industrialization of research, and physicochemical properties of media is a quality standard to evaluate. In this paper, the six culture media constitute semi-weathered purple sandy shale that there was abundant in subtropical regions, added waste material of industrial or agricultural, for example slag, sawdust, residual of mushroom culture media. Measuring the physical and chemical characters of culture media and studying the nutrition content, the growth index in order to select the better media suitable for subtropical regions. The results showed that the media of the aeration porosity from 25% to 50% and the capacity of water -holding from 40% to 50% and the pH values from 5.5 to 6.5 is more suitable for the orchid. The media 2 was the best of the culture media and it can be used widely in the culture of orchid in subtropical regions in all kinds of these media. The composition of the media 2 was the semi-weathered purple sandy shale︰the slag︰topsoil︰rice husk︰mushroom residual of mushroom culture media︰pine bark=20%︰12%︰10%︰18%︰18%︰22% , and the aeration porosity was 39.8%, the water-holding was 48.7%, the organic matter content 44.2% and the hydrolysis nitrogen, and available phosphorus, and available potassium content were 283.4 mg/kg, 183.0 mg/kg and 309.4 mg/kg, respectively.