A pot experiment was conducted to study the effect of arbuscular mycorrhiza, cowdung and phosphorus on red amaranth and Indian spinach in the net house of the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh. The experiment was laid out in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with five replications and 8 treatment combinations comprised of T 1 : Control, T 2 : Arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM), T 3 : Cowdung (CD), T 4 : Phosphorus (P), T 5 : AM + CD, T 6 : CD + P, T 7 : AM + P and T 8 : AM + CD + P. Red amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor L.) cv. BARI Lalshak-1 and Indian spinach (Basella alba) cv. BARI Puishak-1 were used as test crops for the experiment. The experimental results showed that there were significant differences in growth and yield characters such as plant height, plant diameter, number of leaves per plant, shoot fresh and dry weights, root fresh and dry weights of red amaranth and Indian spinach due to the application of arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM), cowdung (CD) and phosphorus (P) independently and combinedly. When arbuscular mycorrhiza, CD and phosphorus were applied combinedly, it exhibited a remarkably higher response in growth and yield of these vegetables.

Most of the vegetable crops retain an association with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) which can improve the growth, nutrition, water supply and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses of host plants. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to investigate whether the association of red amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor) and Indian spinach (Basella alba) with AMF, increase the shoot mineral nutrient contents and whether supplementation of organic matter and phosphorus enhance AMF association. The experiment was laid out in a factorial design considering three-factor viz. arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM), cowdung (CD) and phosphorus (P). There were five replications and total 40 treatment combinations. Results showed that in both vegetable maximum N, P, K, S, Mg, Fe, Mn, Cu and Zn and protein contents were observed due to the application of AMF and cowdung with phosphorus. The combined application of AMF with cowdung and phosphorus enhanced the association with plants and was more effective than only AMF application to enhance nutrient contents. Also, the uptake of almost all macro-and micronutrients increased due to the application of cowdung and phosphorus with arbuscular mycorrhiza.

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