Document Type : Articles
Authors
1 Department of Horticulture and Garden engineering, College of Agriculture, Tikrit University, Tikrit, Iraq.
2 Ministry of Agriculture, Office of Forestry and Desetification, Baghdad, Iraq
Abstract
This experiment on Malabar neem trees ( Melia dubia Cav.) aimed to know the extent to which some vegetative growth traits of these trees are affected by the amount of NPK fertilizer added and the method of addition. The experiment was designed according to a two-factor randomized complete block design (RCBD), the first factor: adding balanced NPK fertilizer (20, 20, 20) at three levels (60, 120, 180) g.plant-1 and the second: number of NPK fertilizer batches (6, 12, 24) batches.plant-1. The data were analyses by use SAS program the difference between various treatments means are tested with Duncan Multiple range test at the 5% probability level. The results showed that the plants treated with a concentration of 180 g. plant-1 were significantly superior in all studied traits (number of branches, number of leaves, stem diameter, stem height, branch diameter and branch length) compared to the same studied traits with the lowest concentration of 60 g. plant-1. As for the factor of the number of NPK batches, the fertilizer batch 6 batches. 4 weeks-1 was superior to the batches 12 and 24 respectively in the traits of number of branches, number of leaves, stem diameter and main stem height. The study concluded that the amount of fertilizer 180 g. plant-1 had a positive effect in improving the studied vegetative growth traits. but for the batches number factor, there was no noticeable effect appear on the trees size at the end of the experiment period due to the small amount of fertilizer used.
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