Amin Abbasi

Milk thistle is a medicinal plant that has many healing properties. Nutritional management is one of the ways to improve the quality and quantity of this plants, lik other plants. Therefore, in order to investigate the effect of inoculation with mycorrhiza and nano zinc oxide application, this research was carried out in Research Farm of Maragheh University with geographical coordinates 37°23' N; 46°16' E and 1485 meters above sea surface in northwest of Iran, during 2017-2018 growing season as Factorial experiment conducted based on a randomized complete block desing with three replications. The main factor included mycorrhiza: Control (No inoculation of mycorrhiza), Piriformospera indica + Trichoderma spp, Piriformospera indica and Trichoderma spp. Also sub factor included zinc application: Control (No application of zinc) and nano zinc oxide. According to the results, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, carotenoid and hydrogen peroxid were affected by interaction effect of mycorrhiza × zinc at the p < 0.01 level. The obtained results showed that the highest amount of chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll and carotenoid was obtained from the treatment of Piriformospera indica + zinc. Also, the highest amount of chlorophyll a was obtained from the treatment of Trichoderma spp and the absence of zinc, which was not significantly different from the treatment of Piriformospera indica + zinc. The highest and lowest amount of hydrogen peroxid was obtained from control (No inoculation and zinc spraying) and inoculation with Trichoderma spp and zinc application.