Vegetative Growth Yield and Yield Components of Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) as Influenced by Irrigation Intervals and Nitrogen Levels

Two years field experiments were conducted, during the seasons of 2005 and 2006, to study the effects of four irrigation intervals (2, 4, 6 and 8 days) and four nitrogen fertilizer rates (0, 100, 200 and 300kg N ha^-1), and their interactions on the vegetative growth, yield and its components traits of eggplant (Black Beauty cv.). Each of the used irrigation intervals, nitrogen levels, and their interactions reflected significant differences among the mean values of all studied vegetative growth, yield and its components traits of eggplant, in both seasons. The results of the main effect of irrigation intervals reflected that applying irrigation water every two days gave the highest mean values of the most studied vegetative growth, yield and yield components traits, in the two seasons. Also, application nitrogen fertilizer at the rate of 300kg N ha^-1 gave the highest mean values of the most studied vegetative growth, yield and its components traits, in the two seasons. The optimum interactive treatment was the combination between applications of irrigation every two days combined with application of nitrogen fertilizer at 300kg N ha^-1, in both seasons. Since, this combination treatment gave the highest mean values of all studied traits especially leaf area (46731.27cm^2), number of fruits /plant (26.24), fruits weight / plant (2.25kg) in 2005 season and 441708.94cm^2, 55.68 and 1.986kg in 2006 for the previous traits respectively.