Evaluation of Plant-to-plant Variability of Medicinal Plants

Many of precision farming studies have shown a high plant-to-plant variability for many crops. This study was conducted to evaluate the plant-to-plant variability of three medicinal crops in comparison with corn as a long term commercial species. Thus a field experiment was performed in 2009-2010 in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, research farm. In this experiment plant morphological characters were monitored to find their association with final crop yield using a complete random block design with three replications. Plants were sampled during the growing season every 7 days. Our results showed that plants height and leaf number variability were quite high for medicinal crops compared to corn and the variability has increased towards the end of the growing season. Such condition was more prominent when the yield anomalies have been calculated. The positive and linear relationship between leaf number and medicinal crops biological yield indicated that by increasing the homogeneity of such neglected crops, there is a high potential to increase their yield under commercial production.