Management of the noxious weed; Medicago polymorpha L. via allelopathy of some medicinal plants from Taif region, Saudi Arabia

Germination bioassay was carried out to test the biological activity of Achillea santolina L. (ASAE), Artemisia monosperma Del. (AMAE), Pituranthus tortuosus L. (PTAE) and Thymus capitatus L. (TCAE) aqueous extracts (collected from Taif region, KSA) on germination percentage (GP), plumule (PL) and radicle (RL) lengths (mm) besides seedling dry weight (SDW) (mg/seedlings) of Medicago polymorpha L. The inhibitory effect of P. tortuosus was insignificant compared to the other three donor species which attained the strongest allelopathic potential in the following order: A. santolina > A. monosperma > T. capitatus. Growth experiment using crude powder of the four donor species was conducted to examine their effects on leaf area index (LAI), photosynthetic pigments, total available carbohydrates (TAC) and total protein (TP). It is worth mentioning that each of the four donor species crude powders mixed with clay loam soil appeared to have a great inhibitory allelopathic effect on LAI, total photosynthetic pigment and chlorophyll a (Chl a) while carotenoids exhibited a slight increase with the application of the four donor species crude powders. TAC and TP were significantly decreased with increasing the crude powder concentrations while a slight decrease was recorded for carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio. There is possibility of using these allelochemicals directly or as structural leads for the discovery and development of environmentally friendly herbicides to control weeds. The study recommended that these species must be phytochemically examined in future for their allelochemicals in order to provide information on the possibilities of using one or more of these species as bioherbicides.