Growth of Some Sugar Beet Varieties Under Different Locations as Affected by Foliar Application with Salicylic Acid on Yield and Quality

Abstract

Two field experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of foliar application of salicylic acid (SA) on the growth, yield and quality characters of five sugar beet varieties (MARWA KWS, SUGAR KING, MiRAGE, DREEMAN and ESTORA KWS) under two types of soil in the two different locations in Nubaria and Sakha regions during 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 seasons. The experiments were conducted in split-split plot design in the three replications, where the main plots assigned by the two soil types (sandy soil in Nubaria and clay soil in Sakha), while the subplots were occupied by the three foliar application concentrations of SA (control, 1000 and 2000 ppm) and the five sugar beet varieties (Marwa kws, Sugar king, Mirage, Dreeman and Estora kws) were allocated randomly the sub- subplots. The results revealed that the foliar application of 2000 ppm SA significantly influenced the top fresh mass and root biomass of sugar beet plants. Conversely, the increasing concentration of SA led to significant differences in fresh mass, sugar yield, and sucrose % as well as purity % of sugar beet in both seasons. The Dreeman and Estora kws exhibited better performance in terms of root length under Nubaria conditions. The interaction effect between the three factors gave the maximum levels of increment for most of the studied characters, particularly for the cultivar ESTORA KWS.