Plant growth regulators (PGRs) are a valuable tool in the ornamental industry. Whether it is for promoting or controlling growth, PGRs give growers the opportunity to produce high quality crops in the face of their production or shipping challenges. Often, substrate drench applications provide greater growth control, require less labor, and have shortened re-entry intervals than spray applications. Current PGR recommendations for ornamental millet (Pennisetum glaucum ‘Jester’) are for spray applications; therefore, the objectives of this study were to evaluate the efficacy of different PGRs applied as substrate drenches to improve marketability and control growth of ornamental millet ‘Jester.’ Seeds were received from a commercial supplier and sown into 288-cell plug trays (5-mL individual cell vol.) filled with a pre-moistened commercial soilless propagation substrate. After 24 d, young plants of similar heights, basal diameters and culm were transplanted with one plant per 11.4-cm-diameter container filled with a commercially available peat-based substrate. At 7 d after transplant, plants received 59-mL aliquots of solution containing 0 (deionized water control),1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 mg·L–1 ancymidol, flurprimidol, paclobutrazol, or uniconazole or 25, 50, 75, 100, or 200 mg·L–1 ethephon. Plants were grown at bench-level in a glass-glazed greenhouse with an air temperature set point of 23 °C, and supplemental day-extension lighting provided by light-emitting diode lamps from 0600 to 2200 hr (16-h photoperiod) to achieve a daily light integral of ~14 mol·m–2·d–1. Data were collected four weeks after drench. For each chemical, effects of PGR concentration were analyzed independently, and means were separated using Tukey’s honestly significant differences. For all analyses, a P ≤ 0.05 was used to determine significant effects. In general, ancymidol and ethephon provided the best growth control, while flurprimidol and uniconazole were found to be inadequate for drenches at the concentrations investigated due to unmarketable plants. Paclobutrazol resulted in unmarketable plants at concentrations ≥ 1 mg·L–1. Ancymidol substrate drenches containing 1 to 16 mg·L–1 resulted in plants that were 3% to 21% shorter and 3% to 14% smaller plants, respectively, than untreated plants. Similarly, increasing ethephon substrate drench concentrations from 1 to 16 mg·L–1 resulted in plants that were 7% to 36% shorter and 27% to 41% smaller plants compared to the untreated control. Results from this study establish substrate drench recommendations for ornamental millet ‘Jester’; however, further investigations are needed to assess growth control responses of other ornamental millet cultivars.
