The aim of this study was to determine the best size and shape of containers to produce higher quality seedlings, and determine which treatments (moving the seedlings to other beds, or transfer to bigger containers, or pruning the shoot and root syst
em of Ceratonia siliqua seedlings in the nursery) are the best for growth and stabilization in out planting. The study showed that the control seedlings D1 which were growing in traditional plastic containers (1 liter) gave low survival rate which did not exceed 20%, and this was due to numerous reasons mainly roots deformation. Seedlings D8, the containers(2 liters) improved the morphological characteristics of root and shoot system and reduced the roots deformation, which led to higher survival rate reached more than 82%. While the deep containers and the air pruning improved the structure and spread the root system of seedlings D9 and limited the roots deformation, which led to higher survival ratio reached more than 95%. Moving the seedlings to other beds in the nursery improved the survival rate in out planting, which amounted ,in D2, to more than 95% and in D3 over than 67%. Also, the study confirmed that cutting the developing top of shoot system and leaving the seedlings in the beds until their planting date D4 did not give a significant effect compared to D5 in which the developing top of their shoot system was cut and was transferred to bags of (12 liters) with pruning the root system, and the survival rate was more than 72% in D4, and over 62% in D5. Regarding to survival rate under the influence of transport operations to larger bags, the D7 which was transferred to bags of 3 liters capacity surpassed in significant differences and was 77.5% compared to D5 and D6 which was transferred to 12 liters bags, where the survival rate in which was 62.5%.
