Effect of Full Irrigation and Alternative Furrow Irrigation on Yield, Yield Components and Water Use Efficiency of Tomato (Super Strain B)

Deficit irrigation is an essential optimization method for water consumption in irrigated lands and is feasible by irrigating only half of the furrows either constantly or alternatively. In order to evaluate yield, yield components, and water use efficiency of tomato (Super Strain B), this study was carried out at the field of Agriculture and Natural Resources, College of Karaj, Iran. The experiment was performed as a randomized full block design with three replicates including three treatments: full irrigation, variable and constant alternative furrow irrigation. Irrigation interval was calculated based on MAD=0.5 using a TDR moisture meter device. At the end of the growth season characteristics such as yield, plant height, number of fruit, fruit diameter, length of root and root dry weight were determined. Totally, deficit irrigation produced significant effect (p<0.01) on yield and yield components. Yield reductions were determined to be about 10.17 and 34.46 percent respectively for variable and constant alternative furrow irrigation as compared to full irrigation. Reduction values were 16.67 and 30 percent for root length, 12 and 32.17 percent for root dry weight, 17.87 and 38.76 percent for plant height and 14.74 and 34.52 percent for number of fruit in alternative furrow irrigation treatment as compared to full irrigation, respectively. Water use efficiency was 1.8 and 1.3 times greater in variable and constant alternative furrow irrigation compared to full irrigation treatment. The results show that under conditions that land is not limiting factor area under cultivation can be nearly doubled by practicing deficit Irrigation so that total yield may increase considerably compared to that of full irrigation practice. In this context, constant alternative furrow irrigation compared to variable alternative furrow irrigation seems be economically more affordable because water use efficiency would be increased to as much as 1.8 times.