1 Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology, Abohar-152 116, Punjab, India.
2 Divison of Horticulture, IARI, Pusa, New Delhi-110 012, India.
Field experiments were conducted in sandy loam soil to study the effect of variable irrigation and fertigation on yield, irrigation production efficiency and economic return of potato during 2001–03 in semi-arid environment. The treatments consisted of four irrigation levels viz., I1 (IW/CPE = 1.20); I2 (IW/CPE = 1.00); I3 (IW/CPE = 0.80) and I4 (IW/CPE= 0.60) and three fertigation (N:P2O5:K2O) levels i.e. F1 (187:63:125), F2 (141:47:93) and F3 (93:32:63) kg/ha. Irrigation level I1 produced significantly higher fresh tuber yield (28.04 t/ha) which was at par with I2 (26.52 t/ha). The maximum fresh tuber yield of 25.96 t/ha was obtained in fertigation level F1, which was 3.71 and 17.82% higher than F2 and F3, respectively. Irrigation level I3 had maximum production efficiency (12.78 kg/m3), whereas the highest nutrient use efficiency was observed in fertigation level F3 (115.65 kg/kg). The gross return and net return were higher at irrigation level I1 and fertigation level F1.
