juvenile cuttings (2 months old or younger) root more easily (Finneseth, 1997; Geneve, unpublished data).

One clonal propagation method that has been little-investigated in pawpaw is layering. Layering is a form of clonal plant propagation in which the shoot of a plant is induced to root while still attached to its mother plant. Layering is often successful in propagating difficult-to-root species that may be impossible to propagate by any other method (Hartmann et al., 1997). One aspect of layering that encourages rooting is the etiology of the shoots as light is excluded due to the medium covering the top of the mother plants. Etiolation causes several physiological changes in the plant that enhance rooting (Hartmann et al., 1997). Etiolation has been shown to enhance adventitious rooting in several fruit and nut crops, including apple (Delargy and Wright, 1978) and chestnut (Biricolti et al., 1994). Wounding or girdling shoots also enhances rooting by slowing or blocking downward movement of carbohydrates, auxins, and other translocated compounds so that these compounds to accumulate just above the girdle, causing rooting to occur at this point.

Pot layering is a unique form of layering seldom mentioned in the literature. Some advantages of using pot layering over mound layering would be that pot layering is performed in a greenhouse, under more controlled conditions than in the field. Also, the plants in pot-layering would be self-contained and easy to move compared to mound layering. Pot layering was attempted in a species related to pawpaw, Annona squamosa. (Venkataratanam and Satyanaranaswamy, 1956). The stems of one year old plants were cut to expose a tongue near the base of the plant, then covered with another pot filled with soil. Shoots were gradually separated after 4 to 5 months. These authors reported that 2.57% of pot layered shoots produced adventitious roots. While the rooting percentage was low, this study found that pot layering was more successful than air layering, with 0.69% of shoots producing roots.

Pot layering is a method of propagation that may enable rooting in difficult-to-root plants such as pawpaw, and would be a research propagation method that would allow the KSU-NCGR to obtain and store valuable germplasm on its own roots. The hypotheses for this study were that pawpaw shoots treated with a continuous supply of auxin delivered via wick will have an increased rooting potential than shoots treated with