Agricultural society’s attitude toward the application of irrigation methods is due to the ability of these methods to reduce water waste, increase water use efficiency and decrease leaching of nutrients. These features of irrigation methods not only increase water availability for irrigation, but also decrease the growers' concerns over water and soil pollutions. In 2007 and 2008 open field experiment was carried out at the southeast of Iran, to study potato growth and yield under conventional irrigation (CI) and partial root zone drying (PRD), and various sources of nitrogen fertilizer (without fertilizer, (NH4)2SO4 at high level, (NH4)2SO4 at common level and Ca(NO3)2) application at tuber initiation stage. Results indicated that PRD - irrigated plants were superior for most of the studied parameters compared to CI. In most treatments, the plants that irrigated with PRD without any nitrogen application were better according to the traits including stem number, shoot fresh and dry weight, root fresh weight, leaf area, tuber number, yield fresh and dry weight, total soluble solid (TSS) and tuber test. Our results suggest that the PRD irrigation system might become an alternative in large potato producing areas in the world, where water is limiting and where salinity might become a problem. This method can improve the potato tuber yield and its quality, and on the other hand, increase water use efficiency and consequently save large amount of water.
