Two outdoor pot experiments were conducted in two consecutive years under outdoor conditions during the wheat growing season in Saudi Arabia to determine the effects of
urea and certain compound
fertilizers (NPK), compared to the effects of the nematicide
fenamiphos on the cereal
cyst nematode (CCN), Heterodera avenae, and wheat growth. The results showed that all of the treatments, except the
fertilizer diammonium phosphate (DAP), reduced the number of nematode
cysts/root system and increased (P ⩽ 0.05) the dry weight of nematode-infected wheat plants.
Fenamiphos and
urea resulted in the best control, followed by the NPK
fertilizers. The combined application of
urea and
fenamiphos resulted in the most significant effect in decreasing (P ⩽ 0.05) the number of
cysts/root system and increasing (P ⩽ 0.05) the growth of nematode-infected wheat plants.