Effect of foliar application of gibberellic acid and seaweed extract spray on growth and leaf mineral content on peach trees

Abstract EN

This study was conducted at the peach orchard, Horticultural Department, College of Agriculture – University of Baghdad during 2013 / 2014 growing seasons to investigate the influence of gibberellic acid spray and seaweed extract spray on 3 year's old trees of “Peento” peach cultivar.

This study included two factors; gibberellic acid spray (GA) and seaweed extract spray (Sea Force) (SF).

The first factor three levels were used, 0, (GA0), 50 (GA50) and 100 (GA100) mg.L-1 and three levels of seaweed extract, 0 (SF0), 2 (SF2) and 4 (SF4) ml.L-1.

Each treatment replicated three times with a factorial experiment using RCBD.

The number of trees used was 27 trees.

The experimental results showed that gibberellic acid at 100 mg.L-1 and seaweed extract at 4 ml.L-1 (GA100SF4) significantly gave the highest total leaves area of 2316 and 3115 cm2, the highest leaf chlorophyll content of 36.33 and 37.18 mg.g-1, leaf carbohydrates content 12.14 and 12.65 %, the highest leaf nitrogen content of 1.82 and 1.94 %, and the highest leaf zinc content of 22.39 and 25.21 ppm for both seasons, respectively.

The lowest value of these parameters was found in the control (GA0SF0) treatment.

It could be concluded of this experiment that the gibberellic acid at level GA100 and seaweed extract at level SF4 improved vegetative characteristics and leaf mineral content in peach trees cv.

Peento and we recommended conducting these treatments annually and study the effect of gibberellic acid and seaweed extract on other concentrations on other fruit trees.