Effectiveness of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) based bio-fertilizer on early growth of coconut seedlings

Abstract

Coconut (Cocos nucifera L) is one of the predominant plantation crops in Sri Lanka. The success of a coconut plantation, in terms of its establishment as well as its future performance, is heavily dependent on the quality of the seedling used. Thus attention needs to pay to raise healthy seedlings in coconut nurseries. Coconut nurseries adopt different agronomic practices to produce good quality seedlings. In this process, applying mycorrhizal inoculants is becoming an increasingly common practice in plant nurseries. Therefore the effects of mycorrhizae based biofertilizer on root and shoot development of coconut seedlings was evaluated under nursery conditions for a period of seven months. The treatments were the presence of mycorrhizae based biofertilizer (T1) and absence of mycorrhizae based biofertilizer (T2). Application of mycorrhizae based biofertilizer had no significant effect on growth parameters tested in the early stages of seedling development up to four months. In contrast, the bio fertilizer significantly increased the numbers, volumes and dry weights of primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary roots and stem girth at the latter stages of seedling growth. The leaf area and seedling height were not significantly increased by application of biofertilizer during the nursery period. These results revealed that the usage of mycorrhizae based biofertilizer positively affected root development and stem girth of coconut seedlings. The application of the mycorrhizae based biofertilizer seems to be beneficial to produce high quality seedlings with well developed roots and thus obtain good field establishment, thereby reducing the number casualties at early field establishment.