Water Quality Effects on Agronomic Parameters of Subsurface Drip Irrigated Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) under Tunisian Climatic Condition

Field experiment was conducted at the Higher Institute of Agronomy of Chott Meriem (Tunisia) during the growing season 2011-2012 to investigate the effects of water quality on agronomic parameters and water use efficiency (WUE) to produce potato (Solanum tuberosum L.). Irrigation management treatments were fresh (1 dS m-1) and saline waters (4 dS m-1). Subsurface drip irrigation was used, a rate of 4 L h-1 applied at the same irrigation duration and interval. Statistical analysis showed that the degree of salinity has a highly significant effect on the plants height growth and leaf area. The relatively high content of salts for the treatment generated a highly significant difference on the average root length density 0.0214 and 0.0262 cm cm-3 respectively for the witness and treatment. Water quality has given us a highly significant difference on plant yield the average weight of about 1.24 ± 0.22 and 1.18 ± 0.32 kg m-2 respectively for the witness and treatment.