Beneficial Effects of Mycorrhizal Fungi on Growth Characteristics and Nutrients Uptake by Plane Tree (Platanus orientalis L), Subjected to Deficit Irrigation

Plane tree is one of the important trees cultivated in urban landscapes of Iran and often suffers from different nutritional issues including deficiency and toxicity of mineral nutrients. Mycorrhizal fungi have been introduced to increase growth and quality of plants in horticulture. To study the combined effect of two mycorrhizal fungi (G. mosseae and G. intraradices) on plane trees, an experiment was conducted based on a randomized complete block design with 4 treatments and 6 replicates. Treatments included control (without fertilizer), livestock manure, complete fertilizer (20:5:10) and manure + fertilizer + mycorrhizal fungi. Some traits and indices including phosphorus, nitrogen, iron and zinc contents, leaf fresh weight, current year growth and total soluble carbohydrate and chlorophyll contents were evaluated. The results showed the positive effects of manure, fertilizer and mycorrhizal fungi on the plane tree, as these treatments significantly increased all examined parameters except for current year growth. Contents of phosphorus, nitrogen, zinc, iron, chlorophyll and total soluble sugar increased by 400%, 20%, 500%, 34%, 41% and 23%, in mycorrhizal-treated plants, respectively, as compared to the control trees. The results of this study showed a promising effect of the mycorrhizal fungi to be applied along with fertilizer and manure as an appropriate biological fertilizer for plane tree