I am not an expert of course but I dare say that I cannot think a way that the keiki paste relates to the above two methods....
Perhaps
@0soyoung could offer an explanation?
Auxins and cytokinins are antagonistic; auxins suppress budding, cytokinins promote it.
Cytokinins are produced in the roots and are transported up the tree in the xylem and, hence, are difficult for us to manipulate. Auxins are produced in the shoots (buds and leaves) and are transported down (toward the roots) in the cambium. When one prunes or notches just above a bud, the auxin level drops. The background cytokinin level then causes the bud to release. Dabbing Keiki paste on a bud would, instead, raise the cytokinin level at the bud and cause that one specific bud to release.
It doesn't seem to me that dabbing Keiki on a cut end would have any particular effect on buds below, just because the pruning to make the cut end already dropped the auxin level in the cambium 'bucket brigade'. If it is adsorbed into the cambium, though, it might induce new shoots directly from the cambium ring. In tissue culture, shoots emerge from the side of a blob of cells with a higher cytokinin level (relative to auxin) and roots from the side with a higher auxin level (relative to cytokinin). But is getting far aside from how notching above a bud is equivalent to dabbing Keiki on the bud.
Prior to
@my nellie's mention, I have been unaware that notching beneath a bud had any notable effects (
- one more thing for the winter research todo list). I was only aware that fruit growers girdled fruiting sprouts after fruit-set to stop the flow of photosynthate down the tree so that these sugars would instead go into 'fattening up' the fruit.