Water deficiency is the major limiting factor for potato yield promotion. Increasing tuber yield and decreasing consumption of water at the same time are a challenge in development of new potato cultivar. Deficit irrigation is regarded as one of the promising approaches to solve this problem, however no practical technique has been proposed in potato production as yet. By setting different deficient irrigation regimes and investigating potato growth and water use efficiency, we found that only application of deficit irrigation at the seedling stage could achieve the goal of increasing water use efficiency and maintaining marketable tuber yield at the same time. Almost half of the normal full irrigation doubled promotion effects on water efficiency and yield, especially the marketable tuber yield. This may be mainly attributed to establishment of a strong root system, including longer root length and larger root surface area under water deficit at the seedling stage. Based on such a root system at the early development stage, leaf area index and dry matter accumulation were optimized at the later developmental stages. Thus, maintaining water deficit at the seedling stage with enough water supplied at the tuber initiation and bulking stages should be practiced in potato production in water limited areas.
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