Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 23 ISSUE 1
Written by Ovidiu EREMI, Florin SALA

The study evaluated the possibility of using a plant extract in the perspective of alternative plant cultivation technologies. An extract based on the herba (Urtica dioica L.) was used in aqueous solution, in a ratio of 1:10. Foliar treatment solutions were prepared from the base solution (UdE) with concentrations of 25% (V2), 50% (V3), 75% (V4) and 100% (V5), which were tested together with a control variant (V1). The biological material was represented by the Mureșana oat variety. The prepared solutions were applied in four treatments, on consecutive days, the first treatment at the stage of 4-5 leaves (15-19 BBCH code). The effect of the treatments on some biometric and plant productivity parameters was evaluated: plant height (PH), stem diameter (SD), root length (RL), plant weight (PW), root weight (RW), panicle length (PL), number of branching levels (NBL), and distance between branching levels (DbBL). Very strong correlations were recorded between SD and UdE (r=0.969), between PW and UdE (r=0.947), between RW and UdE (r=0.976), between PH and RL (r=0.961), between PW and SD (r=0.974), between RW and SD (r=0.945) and between PW and RW (r=0.951). Biometric parameters of the plants were taken into account, and based on the regression analysis it was possible to estimate with high precision the panicle length (PL) depending on the biometric parameters RL, PW and RW (p=0.0042, RMSE=1.85750), parameters which showed a close correlation with the extract concentration (UdE) applied (r=0.707 in the case of RL; r=0.947 in the case of PW; r=0.976 in the case of RW).

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