Determining the Effect of Different Level of Fertilizer and Tuber Weight on Quantitative Traits of Potato Cultivar under Warm and Dry Climate Condition

The high cost of fertilizers has increased the production expenses so that the farmers are using imbalance fertilizers, which results in lower nutrients uptake and then lower quality of plants. Bio-fertilizers play a very significant role in improving soil fertility by fixing atmospheric nitrogen, both, in association with plant roots and without it, insoluble soil phosphates and produces plant growth substances in the soil.
This was study was done to assess the effect of nutrition matter (chemical and biologic fertilizer) and tuber weights on plant height, LAI and tuber yield.
This research was carried out via split-split-plot experiment based on randomized complete blocks design with three replications. The main plots included feeding by chemical fertilizer and biofertilizer (a1: 180 kg.ha-1 nitrogen fertilizer from urea source, 150 kg.ha-1 P2O5 from triple superphosphate source and 100 kg.ha-1 potassium from potassium sulfate source, a2: 1 kg.ha-1 humic acid and 100 grams per hectare phosphorus biofertilizer, a3: chemical fertilizer, humic acid and phosphorus biofertilizer). The sub-plots included three tuber weights (b1: small or less than 75g, b2: medium or between 70-140g, b3: large or more than 10g), and potato cultivar (c1: Arinda, c2: Savalan and c3: Sante) belonged to sub-sub-plots.
According result of analysis of variance effect of fertilizer (instead plant height), tuber yield and cultivar on studied traits was significant. The results showed that the highest potato yield of 33.4 tons per hectare was obtained in the Savalan cultivar with tuber size less than 75 grams and feeding with humic acid + phosphorus biofertilizer, which was not significantly different from the Sante variety with the same nutritional conditions and tuber size (33.06 tons per hectare).
In general, the use of phosphorus biofertilizer and humic acid improved the studied characteristics of potatoes in the climatic conditions of North Khuzestan. Therefore, it is recommended to use mentioned fertilizers and Savalan cultivar with a tuber size of less than 75 grams in these areas.