An exploratory method to determine the plant characteristics affecting the final yield: A study on Echium amoenum Fisch. & C.A. Mey. under different fertilizers application and plant densities

Abstract

Background: Employing of advanced statistical methods to quantify agricultural information has helped to carry out targeted planning to alleviate the problems of farmers, researchers and policy section. One of these exploratory methods, is multivariate statistical analysis that examines and models the relationship between variables. Considering the importance of Echium amoenum and its use growing trend in traditional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, also the lack of information on the correlations between its yield and morpho physiological traits, the objective of this study was to determine the causality path in which the Echium amoenum characteristics affects the yield of Echium amoenum as regards of application of organic and chemical fertilizers under different plant densities.Results: The employed method revealed that organic fertilizers increased flower yield compared with the control. The flower yield as a result of application of compost, vermicompost and cattle manure were increased by 25, 28, and 27 percent compared with the control, respectively. The results of multiple regression showed that variables of plant height, shoot dry weight, flower number per plant were the main factors affected the flower yield. The relative contribution of shoot dry weight was 16 and 25 percent more than plant height and flower number per plant, respectively. Conclusions: Causality analysis identified that shoot dry weight per plant had indirect effect on flower yield in different paths, as mainly was imposed through plant height considering the path coefficients. this study suggests that optimum production of Echium amoenum with application of ecological inputs along with effective agronomical managements of the causal paths of flower yield forming, including increase in shoot yield and plant height could be achieved through an ecological cropping system with reduced costs and no health concerning due to agrochemicals residual.