Investigating the Effects of Organic Fertilizers on Quantity Index and the Amount of Essential Oil and Chamazulene in Chamomile (Matricaria recutita)

In a sustainable agricultural system, identification of the fertilizers which are nature friendly and suitable for plants is essential. This becomes more important when dealing with medicinal plants. Chamomile has been used as medicine since ancient Roman era. To investigate the effect of three inorganic fertilizers on the plant's growth, and the amount of essential oil and chamazulene German chamomile. An experiment was setup in 2008, in the Research Stations of the Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University, Mashhad, Iran. This study was performed based on a complete randomized block design with three replications. The treatments were cow manure, compost, vermicompost and control (without fertilizer). The results showed that these treatments had significant effects on the number of main shoots and flowers per plant, fresh and dry plant weight, fresh and dry flower yield, seed yield, essential oil percentage and chamazulene yield per hectare. The highest and lowest flower yield were obtained from cow manure (1292 kg/ha) and control (738 kg/ha) respectively. Moreover, the highest yield of essential oils and chamazulene per hectare were observed in the cow manure (7840 g/ha) and compost (354 g/ha) respectively. In addition, the highest chamazulene percentage (5.43 %) was obtained from compost treatment.