Investigation on the effects of water stress and nitrogen on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of sugar beet

The effects of water stress and different amounts of nitrogen on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of sugar beet were investigated. This experiment was conducted at the farm of Khorasan Agricultural Research Center during growing season of 2001. The experiment was laid out in a completely randomized block design, adopting split plot method. Main factor consists of three water levels; I1: without water stress, I2: continuous water stress and I3: early water stress. Sub plots consist of 3 different nitrogen levels. 80, 160 and 240 kg/ha viz. Root yield, pure sugar content and sugar content, sugar yield, sugar percent of molasses, water use efficiency were registered. The results revealed that the effects of water treatment on above mentioned observations, with the exception of pure sugar content and sugar percent of molasses, were significant. Increasing water consumption resulted in significant root yield increase while sugar percentage was decreased significantly. The effects of N levels on all cases were significant. By increasing the Nitrogen content, root yield increased while sugar percentage decreased. Besides, sugar percentage interaction effects were found significant in all cases. In no water stress treatment, root yield increased due to increasing the fertilizer consumption. But in case of water stress treatments, there was a slight increase in yield. No water stress treatment with 160kg/ha Nitrogen had the most yield and water stress treatments, especially continuous water stress, had the best water use efficiency.