Responses of Yield, Quality and Water Use Efficiency of Potato Grown Under Different Drip Irrigation and Nitrogen Levels

Proper irrigation and fertilization are essential to achieve high tuber yield and quality in potato production. Water and nitrogen are required to be improved due to high costs of these agricultural inputs. This study aimed to optimize the use of water and nitrogen in potato to ensure high water use efficiencies as well as achieve optimum yield and tuber quality. Potato plants were subjected to three irrigation treatments, 100% (S100), 66% (S66) and 33% (S33) of field capacity and six N levels, 0 (N0), 100 (N1), 200 (N2), 300 (N3), 400 (N4) and 500 (N5) kg N ha − 1 . Yield, growth parameters and tuber quality were generally more sensitive to irrigation than nitrogen. The highest total tuber yield was obtained under full irrigation with an application of 300 kg N ha − 1 . Plants indicated higher values for yield and growth parameters in full irrigation applications, and significantly lower values were obtained at low irrigations. On the contrary, the full irrigation (S100) application caused a decrease in quality characteristics compared to low irrigations (S66 and S33). Water levels treatments indicated that S66 had the highest mean value of WUE in both years. These results indicated that potato can be produced with acceptable yields while saving irrigation water and certain nitrogen level.