Agriculture
Mani Jabbari; Mehdi Khayyat; Hamid-reza Fallahi; Alireza samadzadeh
Abstract
Saffron that is an important medicinal plant of Iran is influenced by several environmental stresses. Therefore, the consumption of appropriate hormonal and nutritional compounds can reduce the negative impacts of stresses on it and improve the growth and yield of the plant. For this purposes, an experiment ...
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Saffron that is an important medicinal plant of Iran is influenced by several environmental stresses. Therefore, the consumption of appropriate hormonal and nutritional compounds can reduce the negative impacts of stresses on it and improve the growth and yield of the plant. For this purposes, an experiment was carried out based on a Randomized Complete Block Design with four replications to study the effect of Salicylic acid (0, 0.5, 1 and 2 mM) and Potassium Nitrate (0, 250,500 and 1000 ml.g-1), in the research field station of the College of Agriculture, the University of Birjand, Iran, in the growing season of 2015. The indices evaluated included flower and corolla fresh weight, stigma weight and length, leaf length, corm and cormel weights and diameter, chlorophyll florescence parameters and total chlorophyll content. The results showed that the highest amounts of Fv, Fv/Fm, F'v/F'm (117, 0.27 and 0.44, respectively), total chlorophyll (0.85 µg.g fresh weight), flower and corolla fresh weight (36.9 and 32.1 g.m-2, respectively), stigma weight (4.2 g.m-2) and length (29.6 mm) and leaf length (37.7 cm) were obtained at 2 mM level of salicylic acid, while the highest F'm was recorded at 0.5 mM salicylic acid. In addition, pretreatment with 1000 mg.l-1 potassium nitrate increased the amounts of cormel weight and diameter by 30% and 19% compared with the control, respectively. Generally, the results of this experiment indicated an enhancement in saffron growth and yield, affected by corms soaking in salicylic acid and potassium nitrate.
Agriculture
Mohammad Ali Behdani; Gholamreza Zamani; Hamid-reza Fallahi; Mohammad Hassan Sayyari Zohan; Alireza Samadzadeh
Abstract
The use of corms with appropriate weight is one of the main factors in the flowering of saffron. Thus, the impacts of six organic (OS) and conventional (CS) production systems on the growth of saffron replacement corms was studied during one growth cycle from October 2015 up to May 2016 in this experiment. ...
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The use of corms with appropriate weight is one of the main factors in the flowering of saffron. Thus, the impacts of six organic (OS) and conventional (CS) production systems on the growth of saffron replacement corms was studied during one growth cycle from October 2015 up to May 2016 in this experiment. The experiment was conducted based on a randomized complete block design with three replications and six treatments including low, medium and high input organic systems as well as low, medium and high input conventional systems. A transition period of 24 months was considered in the chosen field before corm planting. Based on the results of an analysis of variance, the effect of experimental treatments was significant on the growth properties of most replacement corms (RC). The results of means comparison revealed that the differences within each organic or conventional system were insignificant but they were found to be considerable between the two OS and CS production systems. Total RC weight per clone and the number of flowering buds per RC in the OS production system were on the average 40% more than that of the CS production system. The amount of mean RC weight for OS and CS was 4.75 and 2.54g, respectively. The percent of RC with weight of less than 5g in the CS production system was higher than that of the OS production system (70 vs. 84%), while the percent of RC in 5-10g (13 vs. 14.5%) and more than 10g (3 vs. 15.7%) categories in the OS production system were more than that of the CS production system. The mean value of flowering buds had a significant correlation with the total RC weights per clone (+0.58**), mean RC weight (+0.64**), number of small RC (-0.57**) and number of large corm per clone (+0.61**). In addition, there was a significant correlation between the mean RC weight with the number of RC per clone (-0.55**), the RC weight per clone (+0.73**), the number of small RC (-0.89**) and the number of large RC per clone (+0.81**). Overall, the employment of OS had a significant positive effect on the growth of saffron replacement corms especially on mean corm weight and the number of flowering buds.
