NITROGEN FERTILIZATION VERSUS THE YIELD AND QUALITY OF CORIANDER FRUIT (Coriandrum sativum L.)

Coriander is a herbal plant, whose fruit has medicinal and aromatic use. The field research described herein was conducted in 2006-2008, where a controlled, one-factor experiment was set up in a random block design with four replications. The experimental factor was nitrogen fertilization in doses of 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 kg N.ha(-1) and a control treatment (no nitrogen fertilization). The objective was to determine the effect of nitrogen fertilization on the yield and quality of coriander herbal material (fruit). The experimental results showed that the weather conditions during the research determined the morphological traits and yield components as well as the volume of unprocessed herbal material obtained from coriander plants. The yield of coriander fruit was significantly higher in the season with high precipitations than in the other two years with lower precipitations. The respective differences were 44 and 32%. Nitrogen fertilization did not differentiate the number of plants per plot surface area, weight of fruits per plant or 1000 fruit weight, meaning that the fruit yields were not differentiated, either. However, a significant relationship has been shown between coriander yields and nitrogen fertilization in the years of the experiment. The experiment evidenced that the chemical composition of coriander fruits was more strongly determined by the weather conditions during the growing season than by nitrogen fertilization. A higher content of essential oil in fruit (1.50%) was obtained by coriander growing under drier weather; when the growing season was much wetter, the content of essential oil was much lower (1.07%). The major component of coriander oil was linalool, which made up 67.4% of the chemical profile. Nitrogen fertilization did not differentiate the chemical profile of coriander essential oil.