Effects of Organic and Nitrogen Fertilizers on Growth and Productivity of Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.)

Abstract

The study was conducted in the west area of Iraq on the right side of Euphrates river, during Spring season of 2004. The goal was to study the effects of organic fertilizer (cow manure) and nitrogen fertilizer (urea N 46 %) on growth and productivity of potato crop var. Diesseri. Cow manure fertilizer used in two levels (0, 20 ton/ h) while nitrogen fertilizer used also in two levels (0, 200 kg N/ ha). Complete Block Randomized Design with three replicates was used in this experiment. The results showed the following: 1. Superiority of organic fertilizer treatment (20 ton/ ha) in comparing with nitrogen fertilizer treatment in most morphological, physiological and productivity characters. 2. Superiority of nitrogen fertilizer treatment (200 kg N/ ha) in comparing with organic fertilizer treatment in chlorophyll contents and total tuber number per plant. 3. Organic fertilizer treatment gave total yield and protein percentage in tuber 34.844 ton/ ha and 1.78% respectively. While nitrogen fertilizer treatment gave 30.636 ton/ ha and 1.68% respectively. Control treatment gave total yield 19.511 ton/ ha and protein percentage 1.32% respectively. 4. Organic fertilizer treatment increased yield and protein percentage by 78.5% and 34.6% respectively compared with control treatment. 5. No significant interaction between nitrogen and organic fertilizer treatments.