Potassium management in potato production in Northwest region of China

作者:Li, Shutian*; Duan, Yu; Guo, Tianwen; Zhang, Pingliang; He, Ping; Johnston, Adrian; Shcherbakov, Alexey
来源:Field Crops Research, 2015, 174: 48-54.
DOI:10.1016/j.fcr.2015.01.010

摘要

Field trials were conducted to study response of potato (Solanum tuberosum L) yield and quality to potassium (K) application, soil indigenous K supply (IKS) and productivity (IKP), K use efficiency and critical level of soil test K to establish scientific methods for K management in potato production. Results indicated that K application increased tuber yield by a range of -2.8 to 7.2 Mg ha(-1) with an average of 3.2 Mg ha(-1), 90% positive responses. Potassium application produced an average of 4.9 percentage more commercial rate, 11.3 g more mean tuber weight and 0.4 percentage more tuber starch content and 0.2 percentage less tuber sugar content than those of treatment without K application. The average agronomic efficiency of potassium (AE(K)) was 30.2 kg tuber kg(-1) K2O,56% observations was in 10-40 kg tuber kg(-1) K2O. 79.2% of the observations showed negative K balance in potato fields with an average of 101.7 kg K ha(-1) deficit. 87.5% of all the observations showed positive benefit from K application with an average return of US$715 ha(-1). The average IKS and IMP was 141.8 kg K ha(-1) and 25.9 Mg ha(-1) which can be explained 25% and 30% of variations, respectively, by soil exchangeable K. Significant negative quadratic relationship (R-2=0.75, P < 0.01) between yield response and relative yield, and significant linear relationship (R-2=0.80, P < 0.01) between yield response and AE(K) were obtained. There was a significant relationship (R-2=0.74, P < 0.01) between total uptake K by potato plant and total tuber yield. The critical level of soil exchangeable K at 90% relative yield was 105 mg kg(-1) which can be a reference for K recommendation.