Leafy cuttings of 15 cm in length were excised from
actively growing shoots of donor plants and the leaves
along the lower half of cutting were removed immediately.
The bottom end (5 cm) of cuttings were dipped into
chemical solutions (details given below) for 1 min and then
the cuttings plugged into 50 cell trays (55 ml/cell, top
width: 6 cm, bottom width: 2.5 cm, depth: 10 cm) containing
fine sand as a rooting media in a solar greenhouse.
The cuttings were incubated at 90–95 % relative humidity
with an automatic intermitting fogging system (range:
r = 0.8 m; flow: 30 L/H; Yuyao Runlv Irrigation Equipment
Co., Ltd., Zhejiang, China) (Fig. S1). At the fifth
week after cutting, rooting ability was recorded with the
ratio of the number of cuttings with three or more adventitious
roots to the total numbers of cuttings. For all independent
experiments, a complete randomized experimental
design was used with three replicates and 50 cuttings for
each block.