Effect of cyanospray fertilizer on plant morphological, biochemical characteristics and leaf gel yield of Aloe barbadensis miller (Aloe vera) in pot experiment

Cyanobacteria also called blue green algae which are useful to mankind in various ways and constitute a vast potential resource in varied application such as food, feed, fuel, fertilizer, medicine, industrial products and in combating pollution. Coir pith, a light lignocellulosic material which is spongy, highly hygroscopic and extremely compressive having high lignin content, accumulated in tons creating environmental problems. Hence, recycling the waste by using cyanobacteria in order to get pollution free environment and useful products from coir pith will be an economical and purposeful one. The intention of this study was to evaluate the effect of different concentrations of coir pith based cyanobacterial biofertilizers named cyanospray individually on the morphological and biochemical characteristics as well as yield of Aloe barbadensis Miller (Aloe vera). The pot experiment was conducted at the Model Organic Farm of Bharathidasan University located in Tamilnadu, India. Different treatments of cyanospray (Liquid form) fertilizers viz., cyanospray 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.4%, 0.5% and 0.6% were treated with the plants and without any treatment was considered as control. It was observed that the plant appeared maximum height, number of leaves and leaf weight, leaf breadth, number of offsets and significant improvement in gel and latex yield, as well as Chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, carotenoids, free amino acids and sugar contents were found to be improved with 0.4% cyanospray over control. Hence, it revealed that cyanospray fertilizer alone at 0.4% concentration was the optimum concentration for maximum improvement of the plant characteristics and yield of A. barbadensis Miller.