Hazem Hezam Ahmed Al-Ashwal^*(1) and Bandar Mohsen Ahmed Almangathy⁽²⁾

Received: 16/12/2016                           Accepted: 15/02/2016

Abstract:

An experiment was conducted at a Research Farm, Eastern Regions of Agricultural Station, located in Almanien, Marib governorate, during 2009-2010 season, to study the effect of the partial root-zone drying PRD and ridge height on water use efficiency for potatoes in dry areas. The experiment was designed as factorial experiment (split plot design) to study two factors: first, irrigation method (I) included three treatments, full irrigation (FI), alternative partial irrigation  (API), and fixed partial irrigation (FPA), and the second factor was ridge height (R) included two treatments, high ridge (LR), height of edge ranged between 35-30 cm, and small ridge (SR), height of edge ranged between 25-20 cm. Results showed that application of PRD had higher water use efficiency WUE 0.0696 and 0.0677 tons/mm. hectare for API and FPA, respectively as compared to FI 0.0461 tons/mm. hectare. WUE increased significantly by 50.98 % in API treatment without any significant effect on growth, and yield indicators. Results also showed that the PRD technique reduced evaporation, transpiration, evapotranspiration, and deep percolation rates 28.39%, 19.81%, 49.87%, and 50.71%, respectively, compared to full irrigation. Also, the ridge height and interactions did not affect significantly yield, and WUE.

Key words: Ridge height, Partial irrigation, Potato, Water use efficiency.

Full paper in Arabic: Effect of Partial Root-zone Drying and Ridge Height on Water Use Efficiency of Potato Solanum tuberosum L. in Maareb Province, Yemen