Effects of Biological, Chemical and Animal Fertilizers on Photosynthetic Pigments, Yield and Yield Components of Corn 500 Single cross

The present study was performed to investigate the effects of chemical, animal and biological fertilizers on morphological, physiological, biochemical, functional traits, yield components of corn 500 single-cross, as well as to introduce the best fertilizer treatment.

An experiment was conducted using a factorial based on the randomized complete block design with three replications in a farm located in Dasht-e-Giv in Khoosf city of South Khorasan province in late June of 2018-2019 growing season. The experimental treatments were inoculation/ non-inoculation of seeds with phosphate Barvar-2 as the main plot, and three levels of chemical fertilizer (control, N150: P25: K150 and N300: P50: K300 per hectare) and three levels of animal fertilizer (control, 10 and 20 t.ha-1) as the subplot. Furthermore, indices of plant height, shoot dry weight, row number per cob, grain number per row, 1000-grain weight, grain yield, biological yield, harvest index, seed protein, chlorophyll a, b, total chlorophyll and carotenoids were evaluated.

The results indicated that seed inoculation with bio-fertilizer Barvar-2 significantly increased the dry weight of aerial parts, the number of grains per row, 1000-grain weight, grain yield, biological yield, and photosynthetic pigments. Also, the application of animal fertilizer at the level of 20 t.ha-1 and chemical fertilizer at the treatment of N300: P50: K300 significantly increased all indices studied in this study than the control treatment. According to the results, it was observed that there were significant effects for interactions of bio-fertilizer × chemical fertilizer (chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, carotenoids and biological yield), bio-fertilizer × animal fertilizer (dry weight of aerial parts, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll and carotenoids), chemical fertilizer × animal fertilizer (dry weight of aerial parts, biological yield, chlorophyll b and carotenoids) and biofertilizer × chemical fertilizer × animal fertilizer (carotenoids).

In general, inoculating seeds with phosphate barvar-2, the application of 20 t.ha-1 of animal fertilizer, the application of N300: P50: K300 treatment, the interaction of biological, animal and chemical fertilizers resulted in improving yield and yield components of corn 500 single-cross under agricultural conditions of the present study area.