Exogenous Application Effect of Indole 3-Butyric Acid and Myo-inositol on Improving Growth, Productivity and Bulb Quality of Garlic

Garlic (Allium sativum L.) is one of the oldest and most economic vegetables. It has been demonstrated that garlic was grown and consumed by ancient Egyptian, about 2780 2100 B.C., (Yamaguchi, 1983). Egypt is one the world’s top garlic producing countries, it is ranked as the fourth country among garlic producers, with an annual production of 286,213 tones produced from 127,82 ha (FAO, 2018). In Egypt, garlic is grown mainly for local consumption, however Egypt is one of the top ten garlic exporter countries with 0.9% of total worldwide garlic exportations with a net return of 27 million dollars. Garlic cloves have several bioactive compounds, such as allicin, alliin, diallyl sulfide, diallyl disulfide, diallyl trisulfide, ajoene, and S-allyl-cysteine, which contribute to the garlic’s taste (Kilgori et al., 2007, Shang et al., 2019). Owing to its diverse and valuable compounds, several earlier studies have been reported that garlic and its bioactive ingredients can positively contribute to human health as anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-cancer, anti-diabetic and anti-obesity (Shang et al., 2019). In addition, garlic’s oil has several agriculture actions, such as herbicide, acaricide and insecticide (Abouziena et al., 2009, Ismail et al., 2011, Sharaby et al., 2012). Furthermore, it has a stimulatory effect on onion plants grown under sandy soil conditions T successive field trials were performed at the Agricultural Research Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University during the two successive of 2018/2019 and 2019/2020. to investigate the influence of 0, 0.5 and 1 mM of indole 3-butyric acid (IBA) and 0, 1, 1.5 and 2 mM myo-inositol (MI) and their interactive as folair application on vegetative growth, bulb yield, biochemical constituents and mineral contents of garlic plants cv. Seds 40. The treatments were laid out in a split plot order with three replicates. The obtained results reported that garlic plants positively responded to the exogenous treatments of IBA and MI individually or interactively. It showed generally that application of IBA at 0.5 mM recorded the highest values of vegetative growth, yiled, quality parmemters as well as the mineral content (N, P and K). In the same regard, application of MI at 1.5 and 2 mM significantly promoted moast of studied traits compared to control and the rest of MI concentration, in both growing seasons. Furthermore, the two-factor interaction was found to be significant for all measured traits in both seasons, except for K content. Whereas, exogenous treatment of IBA at 0.5 mM along with exogenous treatment of MI at 1.5 and/or 2 mM resulted in the highest means of most of the above mentioned traits. Thus, it could be suggested that applying a combination of IBA and MI was found to be effective for enhancing vegetative growth, bulb yield and quality as well as macro-elements content.