EVALUATION OF THE CHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS OF WILD AND CULTIVATED MARIGOLD PLANTS.

For evaluation of different sowing dates and foliar fertilization effects on cultivated marigold, a factorial experiment with split plot design and three replications was carried out. Marigold (Calendula officinalis) was cultivated at Baloza Research Station, Desert Research Center, North Sinai Governorate, Egypt,during cropping seasons (2014/2015 and 2015/2016). Three sowing dates (15 September, 1 October and 15 October) and three foliar fertilization (Control, Ever Full Grow and Biomagic product) and their interaction were studied. Results showed that, sowing dates and foliar fertilization have significant effects on plant height, flower dry weight, primary metabolite constituents in marigold flowers such as (carbohydrates, nitrogen, protein and lipids) and flavonoids as secondary metabolites when comparing with the estimated component of wild C. officinalis. However, the best interaction treatment was the sowing date at 1 October and biomagic, which gave a highly significant effect on evaluated traits compared to other ones. So, this treatment was chosen to investigate the separated primary and flavonoid compounds compared with wild plants. The obtained data declared that the highest concentrations of the separated free and combined sugars was inulin. Meanwhile the lysine was the highest percentages of the separated protein amino acids. On the other hand, the highest percentage of fatty acids was palmitic acid. Investigation of flavonoids using HPLC analysis revealed that the plant contained 22 flavonoids compounds in the best interaction treatment and wild C. officinalis. It was noticed that, the obtained major compounds for the chosen cultivated plants were Apigenin-6- arbinose -8-glactose (169.790mg/100g), Hespiridin (102.330mg/100g) and Luteolin-6- arbinose-8- glucose (85.565mg/100g). While the obtained major flavonoids compounds for the wild C. officinalis were Hespirtin(117.340 mg/100g), Luteolin-6- arbinose-8- glucose (21.587 mg/100g) and Apignin-6- glucose -8- rhamnose (11.778 mg/100g).