EFFECT OF CHEMICAL FERTILIZATION AND BIOFERTILIZATION ON GROWTH AND PRODUCTIVITY OF SAVORY (SATUREJA HORTENSIS L.) PLANTS

The present study was carried out at Menia Governorate (Brotobat village-West Megaga Center, 200 km from Cairo), during the two successive seasons of 2013 and 2014. The objective of this work was to study the effect of chemical and bio-fertilizers on growth characters and essential oil productivity of savory (Satureja hortensis L.) plants. From the results, it can  be concluded that  the combination of  full dose of NPK+biofertilizer increased plant height, fresh and dry weights of herb (g/plant) as well as  seed index. Moreover, full dose of NPK treatment produced the highest mean values yield per plant and per feddan. It was obvious that, fertilized summer savory plants with biofertilizer only showed its superiority for increasing oil percentage in the seeds. The highest oil yield resulted from the plants fertilized with full dose of NPK+biofertilizer. Whereas, the lowest content was produced from treated plants with  biofertilizer only. The main component of oil is carvacrol,  which was the highest constituent.  As for the effect of applied treatments on oil constituents, it is clear that application of  biofertilizer alone decreased carvacrol percentage since it was 45.66% comparing to other applied treatments, which ranged from 45.66 to 52.06%. However all applied fertilization treatments did not largely show appreciable differences in oil constituents.  In addition, total carbohydrates %  in  the leaves of the plants was increased  by using the treatment of full dose of NPK+biofertilizer. Also this treatment led to an increase in the macro elements N, P and K in the plants, but biofertilizer only led to the lowest total carbohydrates %  and the lowest N, P and K %  in  the leaves.