STUDYING THE POSSIBILITY OF CULTIVATING PIMPINELLA ANISUM L. PLANT UNDER SINAI CONDITIONS BY USING CHEMICAL FERTILIZATION AND MYCORRHIZA

A field experiment was carried out at El-Maghara Research Station (North Central Sinai), Desert Research Center, during the two successive seasons of 2012/2013 and 2013/2014, to study the effect of biofertilization (mycorrhiza) and chemical fertilization on growth, fruit yield, essential oil and chemical composition of anise (Pimpinella anisum L.)  plants. This experiment had a split plot design with three replications, the main plots were the mycorrhiza at two levels (non-inoculated and inoculated), and the sub plots were the chemical fertilization (0, 50, 75 and 100% of NPK), to be 100% of chemical fertilization of NPK (200 kg/fed ammonium sulfate + 200 kg/fed calcium super phosphate + 100 kg/fed potassium sulfate, respectively). Obtained data showed that, mycorrhiza application led to a significant increase in plant height, number of umbels/plant, fresh and dry weights/plant, fruit weight/plant, fruit yield/fed, N, P, K andtotal carbohydrates content. Also, in most cases, using 50 or 75% of the chemical fertilization of NPK achieved an increase in the same characters. The interaction between mycorrhiza and chemical fertilization had a significant effect on all parameters, where the best results of fresh and dry weights/plant, N, K and total carbohydrates content could be achieved with treating the plants with mycorrhiza plus 50% of chemical fertilization of NPK. While, the highest fruit weight/plant,fruit yield/fed and phosphorus content were resulted from inoculated with mycorrhiza plus 75% of chemical fertilization of NPK. Meanwhile, the volatile oil composition, resulted from this treatment, was anethole (74.57%), followed by estragole (7.80%), cis-pseudoisoeugenyl-2-methylbutyrate (7.24%) and longifolene (3.22%).