Research Information System
Gesunde Pflanzen, vol.74, no.4, pp.905-913, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
A two-year study was conducted to determine the efficacy of weed control techniques on the stigma quality of saffron and the diversity of the microbial population in the soil from 2019 to 2021. Several weed control methods are applied to reduce weed competition in saffron (Crocus sativus L.) fields. The impact of fourteen different weed control treatments on the pharmacological components was determined by the GC-MS/MS and GC-MS FID analyses. The highest safranal content in the stigma was recorded from metribuzin treatment with 8.00 mg g−1, and the lowest was in the pendimethalin + tepraloxydim treatment with 1.26 mg g−1. The density of the total plant growth promoting bacterial population and the species were defined from the soil around the saffron corms grown in the plots that were applied to the soil treatments. The bacterial species, isolated from the soil samples, were identified using MALDI-TOF analysis. A total of 117 bacterial isolates were obtained from the samples at the root regions of saffron corms The bacterial richness was the highest in the soil sample taken from benfluralin applied with 13 isolates, textile mulch and metribuzin treatments with 12 isolates and sawdust (pine) + benfluralin treatment with 11 isolates. The results showed that the soil treatments used for weed control significantly affected the quality of the saffron stigma, number and population diversities of plant growth promoting endophytic/epiphytic bacteria in the soil and on the corm.