THE EFFECT OF CULTIVAR AND ROW DISTANCE ON YIELD AND QUALITY OF POT MARIGOLD

Calendula officinalis L. - calendula or pot marigold are well-known garden plants, producing large numbers of yellow-orange flowers over a long period. This species apart from its use as an ornamental has traditional culinary and herbal uses. The aim of this paper was to find the best adapted cultivar and optimal row distance, concerning flowers and petals yield and quality. A field experiment was conducted in the 2006-2007 at the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, at Rimski Šančevi, Novi Sad, Serbia. The effects of 4 cultivars: ‘Bački Petrovac’, ‘Orange King’ (originated from Serbia), ‘Plamen’ and ‘Plamen Plus’ (from Czech Republic) and 4 row spacing: 40, 50, 60 and 70 cm, was evaluated. The experiment was in a split-plot design, where the main plot was the cultivar and the sub-plot the row distance. According to ANOVA, year had significant effect only on dry flowers yield. Cultivar had a very significant effect on fresh and dry petals yield, ‘Plamen Plus’ had the highest and ‘Bački Petrovac’ the lowest. Row distance had a very significant effect on fresh and dry flowers and petal yields, the values regularly increased from 70 to 40 cm, where it was the highest. Interaction was very significant only between year and cultivar for all traits, in 2006 the best was ‘Orange King’ and in 2007 ‘Plamen Plus’. The quality of dried flowers and petals was significantly affected only by cultivar. Content of essential oils in flowers was in the range from 0,32- 0,50 ml/100 g, in petals 0,11-0,33 ml/100 g and was the highest in Czech cultivar ‘Plamen’. Domestic cultivar ‘Bački Petrovac’ had the highest content of total flavonoids (11,92%) and total fenol substances (1,37%) in petals, while this content in flowers was the highest in ‘Plamen Plus’.