Effect of the application of biostimulants on the agronomic parameters of corn varieties

Abstract

The use of large quantities of mineral fertilizers causes many environmental problems. The aim of this study was to study the effect of minerals, organic and bio-fertilizers on yield and it’s components of three synthetic varieties of maize and the possibility of replacing part of the mineral fertilizers with organic or bio-fertilizers. The layout of the experiment was Randomized Complete Blocks Design in split plots arrangement with three replicates. The experiment included three synthetic varieties of maize in the main plots and five fertilizer treatments in the sub plots. The results showed that maize varieties had non-significant difference in all studied characters except the number of rows per ear; Baghdad-3 gave the highest mean of the number of rows per ear (14.98 row ear-1). Also, the results indicated that there were significant differences among fertilizer treatments in all studied characters, the application of 50% mineral fertilizer + spraying seaweed extract at 10% had the highest means of number of ears per plant (1.43 ear plant-1), number of rows per ear (15.08 row ear-1), number of grains per row (39.34 grain row-1) which led to highest grain yield (9077 Kg ha-1), while the application of mineral fertilizer as recommended gave the highest mean of 500 grain weight (111.78 g).