Impact of irrigation system management and cultivar on nitrogen use by potatoes under commercial production conditions

Description

The results of seven years of research conducted mainly on the Gold Rush and Russet Burbank cultivars at IRDA’s Deschambault station demonstrated the impact of sound irrigation management on the rate of nitrogen use by potatoes and reinforced the link between nitrogen rates and marketable yield. However, this data was generated mainly with a single cultivar under experimental conditions and over multiple years with variable soil and climatic conditions, which produced considerable variability in the data. It was important, therefore, to measure the impact of irrigation management on nitrogen uptake and available soil nitrogen during the season under commercial production conditions at the same place and on several cultivars at the same time and to link this impact to total and marketable yields and post-harvest residual nitrate.

Objective(s)

• Sample nitrogen uptake five times during the season and available soil nitrogen at peak uptake
• Calculate total nitrogen uptake of the various cultivars together with leachable nitrogen residues (residual nitrogen) by type of irrigation management system
• Correlate nitrogen uptake and available soil nitrogen values with the yields obtained