Effect of Mineral Fertelizer and Compost on Vegetative Growth and Essential Oil Content of Yarrow (Achillea millefolium l.) Plant.

Abstract

Two pot experiments were carried out at the Experimental Farm of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Faculty of Agric., El-Mansoura Univ., Egypt during the two successive seasons of 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 to investigate the effect of NPK fertilizer and compost treatments on vegetative growth and essential oil of yarrow plant (Achillea millefolium L.). Treatments were arranged in a split block design with 3 replicates, which were the simple possible combinations between compost rates (0, 11, 22 and 33 g/ pot) as main plots and NPK rates (0, 1, 2 and 3 g/ pot) as sub plots. The effect of treatments on vegetative growth parameters, inflorescences production ,essential oil percentage and content of the inflorescences were recorded. Data revealed that increasing compost levels significantly increased all the pre-mentioned parameters. The highest values recorded for compost treatments were those using compost at a rate of 33g/ pot. As for NPK fertilization, data also showed that plants received 3 g /pot produced the highest values of all the previously mentioned parameters of yarrow plants. On the same way, the interaction between compost treatments and NPK fertilization significantly affected all traits. The highest values of all parameters in both seasons were recorded from plants received the interaction treatment of compost at 33 g/ pot plus NPK at 3 g/pot.