Abstract:
Common fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) is a valuable essential oil, medicinal, spicy, aromatic, melliferous, vegetable and ornamental plant. It finds application in medicine, cooking, various industries, in veterinary medicine, animal husbandry. Fennel belongs to highly profitable crops; therefore its cultivation in the southern Steppe of Ukraine will significantly improve the performance of agricultural enterprises, especially farms. Our field experiments were carried out in 2016-2018 in the Kherson region on dark chestnut soils typical for the zone. The experimental design included fennel varieties Oksamyt Krymu, Mertsyshor and four gradations of row spacing – 15, 30, 45 and 60 cm. In the experiment, the biometric characteristics of fennel plants reached their maximum values under sowing the Oksamyt Krymu variety with row spacing of 45 cm: plant height was 98.1 cm, leaf surface area – 28.1 thousand m2/ha, dry overground mass of plants – 6.42 t/ha. The highest crop productivity and seed quality indicators were also recorded in this variant: yielding capacity was 1.32 t/ha, weight of 1000 seeds amounted to 5.31 g, essential oil content in seeds made up 5.98% in dry matter, relative yield of essential oil being 69.5 kg/ha. The Mertsyshor variety cultivation and any changes in the row spacing against 45 cm led to a decrease in the above-mentioned parameters. Thus, on dark chestnut soils of the southern Steppe of Ukraine, the most favourable conditions for fennel cultivation were provided by the interaction of the following parameters of the investigated factors: the Oksamyt Krymu variety, row spacing of 45 cm.
