Effect of essential oil and powders of Tithonia diversifolia on the growth parameters and yield of rice in the field

Abstract

The high costs of agricultural inputs push to look for alternatives to increase the production of rice. For this, the objective would be to evaluate in the field, the effect of seed treatment using the essential oil and the improvement of plants using Tithonia diversifolia powders on rice growth. The experiment was carried out in the Department of Moungo, in the locality of Lelem and Kompina. Before the field experiment, the biochemical parameters of the powders and the soil physicochemical were determined. The experimental design is a completely randomized factorial split-plot consisting of three treatments and two varieties (NERICA 3 and NERICA 8) with four replicates. The present study was carried out during two successive seasons of 2018 and 2019. All data are the meaning of these seasons. It appears that the soil of Kompina is an acid (pH between 5.0 and 5.3) and sandy clay that of Lelem is silty-clay-sandy and slightly basic (pH between 6.8 and 7.9). The yield increase is greater in the treated plots than control. Yield is high in the locality of Lelem than in the locality of Kompina. The 1000 seeds weights are very large in the amended plots (33 g) than the control plots (29 g). It is observed a good emergence rate (96%) in the two localities and some symptoms of the disease transmitted by seeds were observed only in the area of Kompina. From this study, we can retain that the NERICA varieties adapt very well to the rainy conditions of up-land and deserve to be popularized. The positive results of the amendment to the powder and treatment of seeds with essential oil on the growth of rice deserve a renewed interest in the exploitation of this plant resource as biofertilizer and biopesticide to improve rice production.