Agro-Ecological Practice for Sustaining Higher Productivity of Fennel Plant Using Alley Cropping System and Endophytic Fungi

Abstract

Sustainable ecological agriculture is achieved by regulating the benefits of trees. The application of leguminous trees as alley cropping protects and increases soil fertility, improves the quality of water by intercepting pesticides, changes the local climate, improves biodiversity, and thus improves productivity. In order to evaluate the impact of alley cropping upon the growth and productivity attributes of fennel, an experiment was carried out during two seasons. The experiment included eight treatments. Fennel seeds were cultivated between Sesbania alleys and treated with N and endophytic fungi according to the eight treatments. After harvesting the fennel, different parameters were determined and biochemical analyses were conducted. All of the alley cropping treatments showed remarkable superiority in all measures of fennel growth and productivity compared to the sole crop treatment. Among the different alley cropping treatments, applying Sesbania at 4 m spacing with N fertilizer and EF increased most of the studied parameters in terms of the least number of days from planting until harvesting of fennel, herb dry weight, number of umbels, fruit yield, essential oil, N, P, and K content, and pigments. In contrast, the highest plant height was recorded with fennel–Sesbania at 2 m spacing + N fertilizer + EF. Applying fennel–Sesbania at 6 m spacing + N fertilizer + EF treatment resulted in higher stem diameter and increased the number of main branches compared to the other treatments.