INFLUENCE OF Trichoderma harzianum AND Glomus mycorrhiza ON BIOMASS AND ESSENTIAL OIL YIELD OF ORGANIC Ocimum basilicum CULTIVATION

SUMMARY The growing interest in dealing with the cultivation of aromatic - medicinal plants requires the study of factors related to the production process, which includes the development of plants in field, as well as their processing and the receipt of essential oils. [...]the most remarkable finding was that although the different treatments did not show significant differences in the quantitative characteristics of sweet basil in the case of quality characteristics with mycorrhiza treatments essential oil having 40 identified ingredients instead of 21 that identified in control. [...]the use of these organic formulations is suggested to be used only in case of essential oil production where a predetermined quality of essential oil will be known. [...]all data were analyzed using GenStat (7th Edition) package and the LSD.05 was used as the test criterion for assessing differences between means (Steel and Torrie, 1982). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Weather conditions The study area is characterized by a typical Mediterranean climate with cold humid winters and hot-dry summers.