The vegetative propagation is an important tool for the improvement of woody and herbaceous species and could be an important tool to improve and to maintain varieties of economic and medicinal importance. In this experiment cuttings 15 cm long of the apical portion and also 25 cm long cuttings of the medial portion of the stems, were used both with and without leaves. The cuttings were planted on styrofoam trays with 72 cells, using 10 different substrata. After 35 days, cuttings were carefully removed, the aerial portion being separated from the roots and conditioned in paper bags and maintained in a stove at 70ºC for 48 h, for the dry weight evaluation. There were analyzed the percentage of rooting, number of leaves per cutting and leaf and root dry weight. There was no interaction among substrata and cuttings for the percentage of rooting. Were no significant differences in the rooting among the different substrata used in the experiment there. Better rooting was observed on cuttings from the medial portion of the stem without leaves and from the apical portion with leaves. For the other variables there was significant interaction between the cuttings and the substrata. The cutting that presented best results were those from the medial portion without leaves in the substrata with A+E sandy soil + humus + vermiculite in the following proportions: (20%: 40%:40%); (40%:20%:40%) and (40%:40%:20%) respectively.
Ocimum gratissimum L.; seedlings; medicinal plant