Influence of colored plastic mulches on germination, growth and marketable yield of potato

الملخص EN

Two field experiments were conducted at Kaha Vegetables Research Farm, Horticulture Research Institute, Agriculture Research Centre during 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 winter seasons to investigate the effect of colored plastic mulches (black-red-blue) on germination, growth and production stages, as well as, chemical constituents of potato cv.

Diamant.

The obtained results showed that there were differences among the tested colored plastic mulches in germination, vegetative growth aspects, yield and its components, as well as, chemical constituents.

Obtained data indicated also that, the black mulch was significantly increase in germination rate and number of stems per plant, whereas; red mulch exhibited the highest values in all studied growth traits, yield and its components.

Although, the lowest values were obtained as a result of using bare soil treatment.

However, the differences between the red and black mulches did not reach to the level of significance in stem length, number of main stems per plant, number of leaves per plant and leaf area.

Conclusively, from the above-mentioned investigation, it can be concluded that utilizing red plastic mulch in the winter on the soil can raise the temperature and moisture around the root zone to get the highest and fastest rate of emergence of the potato seed tubers as well as increasing the vegetative growth parameters, higher total yield and marketable yield with lower production costs than bare soil.