ALLELOPATHIC EFFECT OF Moringa oleifera LEAF EXTRACT ON GROWTH OF MAIZE (Zea mays)

Abstract

Moringa (Moringa oleifera) is regarded as one of the world's most useful trees, with nearly every aspect of the tree having a significant impact on food, medicine, and industry. Vitamin A and C, iron, calcium, riboflavin, b-carotene, and phenolics are all useful choices in moringa leaves. Moringa is gaining a lot of interest these days since its leaves include cytokinin, antioxidants, macro and micronutrients. Moringa leaf extract is a low-cost, eco sustainable organic technology that boosts the growth of most vegetable crops, such as maize, cabbage, and tomato, as well as field crops like rape and common beans. Moringa extract of leaves can be used by farmers as a biofertilizers. Because the extract contains zeatin, a purine adenine derivative of the plant hormone group cytokinin, the impact of moringa leaf extract is similar to that of synthetic hormones. The experiment was comprised of eight treatments. The experiment was laid out in a (CRD) with 3 replications. Application of moringa extract sprayed at every 2 weeks after emergence up to tasseling (with seed priming) significantly increased growth components like number of leaves, plant height, grain weight plant-1, fresh weight of root and shoot, significantly increased as compared to other treatments. The highest plant height (301.44cm) were obtained from T4 while the lowest plant height (231.11cm), were found in the treatments where no moringa leaf extract was used (T0 andT1). From the results it can be concluded that moringa leaf extract can be applied for better growth performance of maize. The length and diameter of cobs, as well as the number of leaves, root length, and shoot length were considerably changed by different treatments, although the length and diameter of cobs and the number of grains cob-1 remained significantly unaffected.