RESPONSE OF DIFFERENT SOURCES OF POTASSIUM ON GROWTH, YIELD AND QUALITY OF FIVE POTATO VARIETIES

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at the Agronomy research field of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, during the period from November 2013 to March 2014, to study the response of different sources of potassium on growth, yield and quality of five potato varieties. The experiment comprised of two factors; Factor I: source of potassium fertilizer: 3 source; S1 - Muriate of potash (MoP or KCl), S2 - Potassium nitrate (KNO3), S3 - Potassium sulfate (K2SO4) and Factor II: potato: 5 variety; V1 - Cardinal, V2 - Asterix, V3 - Carriage, V4 - Diamant, V5 - BARI TPS-1. The experiment was laid out in a split-plot design with three replications. The result revealed that different source of potassium and/or varieties had significant effects on most of the growth, yield and quality parameters. Among three different sources of potassium, potassium sulphate showed the best performance on most of the growth, yield and quality contributing characters. On the other hand among the five potato varieties, Diamant exhibited better performance in respect of yield, dry matter content, specific gravity and total soluble solids in tuber compared to those of other potato varieties. Among the fifteen treatment combinations, the ‘Diamant’ variety with the application of potassium sulfate produced maximum tuber yield (31.47 t ha-1), highest dry matter content (22.30 %), maximum specific gravity (1.12 g cm-3) and optimum total soluble solids (4.30 % brix). Although the combination of potassium sulphate and Diamant (S3V4) showed better growth, yield, quality performance but the combination of potassium nitrate and Diamant (S2V4) also demonstrated statistically similar results in sometime. So, planting potato variety ‘Diamant’ is suitable for producing good quality potato along with applying potassium sulfate or nitrate.