THE EFFECT OF COBALT ADDITION ON THE CHEMICAL PROPERTIES, YIELD CHARACTERISTICS, QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF ZUCCHINI SQUASH PLANTS GROWN UNDER PROTECTED CONDITIONS

Abstract

The experiment was conducted during the two agricultural seasons 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 in one of the greenhouses affiliated to the Agricultural Research Station, College of Agriculture, Basra University, in Karma Ali, with the aim of studying the effect of Cobalt addition on the growth and yield of some Zucchini cultivars, as it included 18 factorial treatments that are the combinations of Six varieties are AL nahrain, Alexandria F1, Seminis, Eskandrany2, Khatoon F1 and Mullah Ahmed, and three concentrations of Cobalt in the form of CoSo4 are 0, 0.75 and 1.5 mg. L-1 was carried out as a one-time split factorial experiment, according to the randomized complete block design and with three replications. The results showed that the AL nahrain hybrid was significantly superior in the leaves content of carbohydrates, nitrogen in the second season, phosphorus, potassium, early and total yield, while the local cultivar Mullah Ahmed excelled in the leaves content of cobalt and excelled Hybrid Alexandria F1 in the percentage of nitrogen in the first season, while the hybrids did not differ significantly in the content of leaves of chlorophyll for both seasons.