Response of flax plant, Linum usitatissimum L. to treatments with mineral and biofertilizers

Field experiments were carried out at Sakha Agricultural Research Station, Kafr-EI- Sheikh, Egypt during the two growing winter seasons of 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 in order to study the effect of different levels of mineral fertilizers from nitrogen and phosphorus (25,50 and 100% of the recommended dose) alone or in combination with a mixture of biofertilizers containing nitrogen fixers (nitrobein) and phosphate dissolving bacteria (phosphorein) on morphological characters and yield of flax cv. Sakha 1 from seeds, oil, straw and fibers. Moreover, anatomy of the main stem was also investigated. The obtained results indicated that increasing level of the used mineral fertilizers induced significant increases in all investigated morphological and yield characters except that of number of seeds per capsule and seed oil percentage which showed no significant effect in this respect. The rate of promotion increased gradually as the rate of mineral fertilizers increased up to 100% of the recommended dose. It is clear that raising the level of the used mineral fertilizers from 25 to 100% of the recommended dose induced significant increases of48.7, 46:6, 55.0, 14.1,37.3,19.1,68.6,45.4,56.8, 44.5, 43.5, 42.3, 38.7 and 47.5% for plant height, technical length, length of fruiting zone, stem diameter, number of capsules / plant, weight of 1000 seeds, seed yield / plant, seed yield / feddan,/seed oil yield / feddan, straw yield / plant, straw yield / feddan, fiber yield / plant, fiber yield / feddan and fiber length of flax cv. Sakha 1; respectively. Data also revealed that flax plants obtained from biofertilized seeds and grown in soil inoculated with biofertilizers (nitrobein + phosphorein) showed significant increases in all investigated morphological characters and in most of yield characters when compared with control plants which were obtained from uninoculated seeds and grown in uninoculated soil. The incremtents in the mentioned characters as a result of biofertilization treatment were 17.8, 17.6, 22.2, 6.2, 15.6, 8.5, 26.8, 20.5, 25.1, 17.3, 15.4, 15.9, 14.3 and 18.5% for plant height, technical length, length of fruiting zone, stem diameter, number of capsules / plant, weight of 1000 seeds, seed yield/plant, seed yield/feddan, seed oil yield/feddan , straw yield/plant, straw yield/feddan, fiber yield/plant, fiber yield/feddan and fiber length of flax cv. Sakha 1; respectively. The interaction between the used levels of mineral fertilizers and biofertilizers proved significant effect for the above mentioned characters. It is noted that the promotion induced by raising the level of the used mineral fertilizers was equal to that induced by biofertilizers treatment which substituted half of the recommended dose from the used NP and this decreased the environmental pollution caused by repeated application of mineral fertilizers. The effect of the used mineral and biofertilizers on anatomical structure of the main stem of flax cv. Sakha 1 was also investigated.