The effect of bio fertilizers on some growth parameters and essential oil of Moldavian dragonhead under drought conditions

One of the fundamental pillars in sustainable agriculture is use of bio-fertilizers in agro-ecosystems in order to eliminate or reduce the use of chemical inputs. The experimental design was a split plot with four irrigation regimes: irrigation at 40 %, 60 %, 80 % and 100% FC (as control) comprising the main treatments, and four biological fertilizers including nitroxin, super nitroplas and biophosphor and non-fertilizer (as control) as the sub -treatments that were applied with three replications. The experiment was conducted in 2013 at the Zabol University research farm in Zabol, south Iran. Nitroxin treated plants had the highest leaf relative water content, plant height, number of lateral branches, fresh and dry weight and followed by nitroplas and biophosphor. Plants irrigated at 80 % FC had the higher plant height, number of lateral branches, fresh and dry weight. While the greatest relative water content was achieved at irrigation at 100 % of FC (control). The experimental results suggested that application of nitroxin along with irrigation at 80 % FC could be useful in drought conditions.