Tip Atrophy: Triggers & Solutions

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Something some of you might struggle with early in production is tip atrophy, often called tip abortion. This is when you see symptoms during propagation, often on calibrachoa or petunia, where it looks like the cuttings were accidentally pinched—but you know they weren’t. Poor rooting, stunted growth and strappy foliage can also cause you to wonder what the heck is going on? To answer that question, we turn to Dr. Will Healy.

As Will explains, this issue can be triggered by a handful of different occurrences in propagation and doesn’t always affect the entire crop. He starts by explaining that tip atrophy occurs in a range of different greenhouse crops in every season but is most often experienced with petunia and calibrachoa in the spring and pansy in the fall. It can be pervasive across entire crops or random, making it especially frustrating. Usually considered a symptom of nutrient deficiency, Will explains that tip abortion or atrophy is nutritional but there are certain processes to understand.

Will runs through the need for micronutrients, especially boron, calcium and copper in a tip atrophy prevention strategy and exactly what levels to aim for when supplementing. The final piece to this puzzle is being aware of potential trigger events. High relative humidity, low light, poor root growth, wet growing points, high soil pH, low transpiration, nutrient leaching and more can lead to tip atrophy.

By the end of this presentation, you and your team will be in a much better position to avoid tip atrophy and tip abortion in your greenhouse production.

FULL VIDEO PRESENTATION: https://youtu.be/7sHVKN3f0HA?si=xT9N2X0O8-QTgqJp