الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Potato plant (Solanum tuberosum) is a native of the new world (the Americas) introduced to the old world in the 16th century (De Jong, 2016) and became the world’s third largest food crop grown all over the world (Smith, 2011), due to its high nutrition value (Woolfe, 1987) and the ability to be grown under a wide range of environmental condition (De Jong, 2016). According to FAO (2020) potato production during 2018 was distributed among different world regions as follows was 28.6, 0.5, 7.1, 12.7 and 51.2 % for Europe, Oceania, Africa, Americas and Asia, respectively and the world area was 17.6 million ha with a production of about 368 million Mg (megagrams). Needs for macro nutrients, particularly N, P and K are rather high and may be up to 180, 80 and 140 kg, respectively per hectare (Dunton, 1971; Bélanger et al., 2002; Shaheen et al., 2015; Franzen et al., 2018). In Egypt, the crop is a major food for human nutrition. Its harvested area during 2018 was 177 thousand hectares with a production of 4.9 million Mg (FAO, 2020). The crop needs high requirements of irrigation water for its growth and yield production (Badr et al., 2010 ) and increasing demand for water with expansion of cultivated crops require rationalization of water application and fertilizer addition. Drip irrigation plays an important role in Egyptian agriculture and increases water use efficiency (WUE) (El Mokh et al., 2015). It enables attaining agronomic and water conservation benefits for irrigated agriculture (Stikic et al., 2003; Badr et al., 2010). There is a positive relationship between applied water and tuber yield |