Two field experiments were conducted on a clay soil at El-Gemmeiza Agricultural Research Station, El-Gharbia Governorate, Egypt during 2016 and 2017 seasons, to study the effect of foliar spraying with three organic acids (propionic, citric and ascorbic acids) and potassium citrate in mixture (two portions potassium citrate, one portion propionic acid, one portion citric acid and one portion ascorbic acids), where three rates of the mixture (4, 8 and 10 g/L) were foliar spraying two times ( at start of flowering and top of flowering) and three times (during squaring stage, start of flowering and top of flowering) in compared to control (untreated plants) on cotton growth, earliness traits, seed cotton yield and its components of Giza 86 cotton cultivar. The experimental design was a randomized complete block design with four replicates.
The important results could be summarized as follows:
Untreated plants and plants which received 4g of the mixture/l twice gave the tallest plants with higher number of fruiting branches in both seasons, while the shortest plants were obtained from plants received 10 g of the mixture/l three times or two times in the first and second seasons, respectively, with lower number of fruiting branches.
Number of total bolls/plant and boll setting percentage significantly responded to concentrations and number of applications in favor of foliar spraying with 4g of the mixture /L three times. However, the control (untreated plants) produced the lowest values of these traits and the highest values of shedding% in both seasons.
The tested treatments gave significant effect on number of open bolls/plant, boll weight, seed index, lint % and seed cotton yield per feddan in both seasons, where the superiority was found in favor of foliar spraying with 4 and 8 g/l three times (during squaring stage, start of flowering and top of flowering) as compared to the other treatments.