The effect of different irrigation intervals and fertilizers on Common purslane (Portulaca oleracea L.)

Common purslane is a warm season plant which had a lot of medicinal properties. An experiment was conducted as a split plot design arranged  in completely randomized block design with three replications in the research field of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University of Khuzestan during 2015-2016. In this experiment, the main plots consisted of four levels of irrigation intervals (5, 10, 15 and 20 days), and the sub-plots included four different types of fertilizers (no fertilizer, chemical fertilizer, chicken manure, and cow manure). The results indicated that five-day irrigation interval exhibited the best results for the most of the traits. Among different types of fertilizers, chemical fertilizer and chicken manure had relatively the highest dry weight of plant, stem, leaf, stem length, number of sub-stems and leaf protein content. The results of this study revealed that in semi arid region such as Khuzestan with low rainfall, the 10-day irrigation interval could be an appropriate alternative for 5-day irrigation interval. Chicken manure not only provide the highest yield, but also it can reduce the amount of chemical fertilizer inputs to the purslane farms.  In addition to an acceptable yield, it can be a great step towards environmental health and, finally sustainable agriculture through reducing application of chemical fertilizers.