EFFECTS OF ORGANIC FERTILIZER ON YIELD AND QUALITY OF SAFFLOWER (Carthamus tinctorius L)

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L) is one of the alternative oil crops increasing planted area in Turkey recently, especially in Central Anatolia. Organic farming is also an alternative farming system increasing in Turkey. For this purpose, this study was conducted to determine the yield and quality of safflower with application three organic fertilizers in Konya region. Research was carried out in 2009 at the Selcuk University Sarayönü Vocational School experiment field. Dincer was used as safflower variety and three organic fertilizers (OF1, OF2 and OF3) have been applied, both with diammonium phosphate and without. Yield, thousand kernel weight, protein and oil content of kernel were evaluated in the experiment. Diammonium phosphate application was significantly important (p 0.01) and organic fertilizers were significantly differ (p 0.01) from control but there is no difference among them. OF1, OF3 and OF2 with diammonium phosphate application were in the first groups in terms of yield, 2652.8, 2531.3 and 2447.9 kg ha^-1 respectively. There was no significantly difference among the organic fertilizer applications in terms of thousand kernel weight. Organic fertilizer applications increased oil content of kernel with and without diammonium phosphate application.