Department of Plant Sciences

Vegetatively propagated plants of the strawberry cultivar ‘Elsanta’ were grown for 12 weeks in rhizoboxes filled with 1.85 kg of mineral soil. Two soil treatments were compared to an untreated (not fertilized) control: a standard N-P-K fertilization and an organic fertilization using a product obtained from plant extracts (BF Basis).

Plants treated with the two fertilizers showed a similar shoot biomass production, about 50% higher in comparison to control. The increased biomass production was due to increased leaf area (about 25% higher for both chemical and organic fertilized plants with respect to control) since the number of leaves per plant did not show any difference between the two fertilizers and the control.

Carbon allocation to produce root biomass was similar for plants treated with both fertilizers and lower in comparison to control roots. Total root length was similar for the fertilized plants, about two-fold that of untreated plants. The different growth behavior between the fertilized and the control plants was underlined by the difference in shoot/root ratio (about 2 for fertilized plants and below 1 for the control). Organically and chemically fertilized plants showed similar root length density and specific root length among them, but about 100% and 400% higher than control plants, respectively.

The use of the organic fertilizer allowed the growth of the strawberry plants at a level comparable to that of chemically fertilized plants.