EFECTO DE LA NUTRICIÓN MINERAL SOBRE LA PRODUCCIÓN DE CULÉN (Otholobium glandulosum (L.) Grimes) Effect of mineral nutrition on culen (Otholobium glandulosum (L.) Grimes) production

A B S T R A C T Culen (Otholobium glandulosum (L.) Grimes) is a medicinal plant which has acquired great importance because of its high psolareno content. The objective of this study was to generate information on fertilization of this crop. To this end, an experiment in pots was conducted with 2 year old plants under two growing substratum: river sand and a volcanic ash soil (Santa Barbara series; Hashy, mesic typic haploxerand). The experiment consisted of nine fertilization treatments and four replicates in each substrate. The treatments were: complete fertilization (N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S and microelements), seven treatments with complete fertilization excluding only one nutrient of the foregoing, and one control treatment without fertilization. In sand, the DM production in the whole plant, shoot and leaves was affected by the lack of P (p 0.05), and ranged between 57.7 to 73.8 cm in sand and 50.0 to 66.9 cm in trumao soil. The results obtained indicated that culen plants are only sensitive to the lack of P and plant height is not a useful indicator of plant DM production in this species.