Mohammed Jalal AlKhaleel*(1) Walid Mansou(1) Yahya Kamari(2) and Nowras AlAbras(3)
(1). Renewable Natural Resources and Environment Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Aleppo University, Aleppo, Syria.
(2). Research Center of Aleppo, General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research GCSAR, Damascus, Syria.
(3). General Organization of Biotechnology, Ministry of Higher Education, Damascus, Syria.
(*Corresponding author: Eng. Mohammed Jalal AlKhaleel. E-Mail: mustabshr@gmail.com).
Received: 01/05/2019 Accepted: 15/04/2019
Abstract
This study was aimed to determine the effect of the water extract of the mistletoe plant on seeds germination of its two main hosts (Amygdalus communis and A. orientalis), and to evaluate the continuous effect of the extract on seedling growth which emergence from treated seeds. Completely randomized design was used with three replications. The treatments were the control besides the treated ones with mistletoe’s leaves extract with a ratio of 50 g ground dried leaves/L). The mistletoe leaves were collected from Al Kalamoun and Sweida sites from parasitic plants on several hosts during spring of 2018. The normal and oriental almonds which were collected from Al Kalamoun site during 2017 season were used. The study was conducted at the laboratories of the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering in Aleppo University and the Agricultural Scientific Research Center in Aleppo. The results showed that the treated seeds with mistletoe extract affected negatively the percentage of germination of both normal and oriental almonds (73.3 and 20.0%), as compared to the control (90 and 53.3%) respectively. Also, the effect of the mistletoe extract was negative on the average of the vegetative area of the plants, where it was decreased in the oriental almonds by 26% and by 16.2% in the normal almonds. The average growth rate of the normal almond plant was faster than that of the oriental almonds in length and leaf area. Therefore, the highest effect of mistletoes on the normal almond seedlings was observed on the vegetative length (19%). While the highest effect of mistletoe extract on oriental almonds was observed on the leaf area (26%). The effect of mistletoe extract was higher on wet weight of the seedlings than that of the dry matter weight, while, the dry matter accumulated in the oriental almond seedlings was affected more than the normal almond seedlings.
Keywords: Mistletoe, Common almond, Eastern almond, Aqueous extract.