Impact of Nano-Chitosan Rate and Glutamine Acid Concentration on Growth, Yield and Volatile Oil Production of Coriander Plants

Abstract

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum, L.) is an important aromatic plant in Egypt. A current work was aimed to study the impact of nano-chitosan rates (0.0, 2 and 4 ml/l), glutamine acid concentrations (0.0, 25, 50 and 100 ppm) and their interaction treatments on growth, yield components as well as volatile oil and some chemical constituents of coriander plant. Two field experiments were conducted at Kafr El-Hamam Experimental Station of Agric. Res. Cen., ElSharkia Governorate, Egypt during 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 seasons. These experiments were based as a split-plot in randomized block design with three replications. The nano- chitosan rates were randomly arranged in the main plots, while, glutamine acid (Gln) concentrations were distributed randomly in the sub plots. Based on two years study it was found that most of nano-chitosan rates and glutamine acid concentrations proved to be superior and recorded higher values of coriander yield components over control. Application of nano-chitosan at 4 ml/l resulted higher values of coriander growth (plant height, branch number per plant and total dry weight), yield components (number of inflorescences per coriander plant, fruit yield per plant and per feddan), volatile oil production (volatile oil percentage, volatile oil yield per plant and per feddan) as well as chemical constituents (N, P, K and total carbohydrates percentages in fruits and total chlorophyll content in coriander leaves) over the lowest rate and control. The same trend in these characters of coriander was obtained when Gln acid was used as foliar spray at 100 ppm concentration compared to the other ones under study. In general, nano-chitosan at 4 ml/l interacted with Gln acid at 50 ppm recorded the highest values of yield components of coriander plants compared to the other interaction treatments under study.  Finally, this treatment gave the highest values in major constituents of volatile oil such as linalool, camphor, gamma- terpinene, geranyl acetate and alpha-pinene.