1All India Coordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture, Department of Soil Science, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat
School of Natural Resource Management, College of Post Graduate Studies, Central Agricultural University, Umiam, Meghalaya-793 103
Online published on 22 July, 2013.
An experiment was conducted to study the response of potato under limited supplementary water supply in relation to rainfall and temperature with the treatments viz. T1: rainfed, T2: one irrigation at stolon formation, T3: one irrigation at tuber formation and T4: one irrigation at stolon formation+ one irrigation at tuber formation. The crop under T4 recorded the highest tuber yield in the first year but at par with T2. However higher yield was obtained under T2 in the 2nd year but not significantly different from T4. The yield was significantly higher than that in T3. This indicated that stolon formation is more critical than the tuber formation for soil moisture availability. The net benefit for the year 2007–08 was the highest for T2 followed by T1. The B:C was also the highest for T2. The experiment reaffirmed the need of water harvesting structure to increase the yield of potato over rainfed cultivation. Since the crop was cultivated under supplementary irrigation, the weather had significant effect on its performance. The rainfall occurred during planting, stolon formation and tuber formation had positive effect on the overall performance of the crop in both the years.
Soil moisture, limited irrigation, potato, weather
