EFFECT OF SOME NATURAL ACTIVATORS ON GROWTH AND QUALITY OF SEASHORE PASPALUM TURF

This investigation was conducted under open field conditions at the Experimental Farm of Hort. Res. Inst., ARC, Giza, Egypt during 2013 and 2014 seasons to find out the response of seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum Swartz) grown in 40-cmdiameter plastic pots filled with about 6 kg of an equal mixture of sand and clay (1:1, v/v) to some natural activators, viz. super blue green (SBG) at 3 ml/l, Ascobien at 1 g/l, BioHorm at 1 ml/l and to some combinations of them when applied as a foliar spray, five times with one month interval. The verdure of control plants was sprayed with the tap water. The results of such investigation have shown that all vegetative growth traits were significantly improved over control in response to either sole or combined treatments applied in this study. Among the individual treatments, BioHorm at 1 ml/l was the best treatment, followed by SBG at 3 ml/l and then 1 ml/l of Ascobien treatment. An excessive improvement was obtained when combining the single treatments, especially combining between the three used activators (SBG at 3 ml/l + Ascobien at 1 g/l + BioHorm at 1 ml/l), as such combination gave the utmost high means of vegetative growth parameters at all in the two seasons. A similar trend to that of vegetative growth was also observed as well regarding the content of chlorophyll a, b, carotenoids, N, P, K, total soluble sugars and total indoles in the leaves, but the opposite was the right concerning total phenols content which was decreased by the various used treatments to reach the minimum values by the combination of 3 ml/l SBG + 1 g/l Ascobien + 1 ml/l BioHorm in the two seasons. Hence, it is recommended to spray the verdure of seashore paspalum turf with a combination of SBG (3 ml/l) + Ascobien (1 g/l) + BioHorm (1 ml/l), five times with 1 month interval during the growth stage to score the best growth performance and highest quality.