Chitosan combined with humic applications during sensitive growth stages to drought improves nutritional status and water relations of sweet potato

The current decline in freshwater resources presents a significant global challenge to crop production, a situation expected to intensify with ongoing climate change. This underscores the need for extensive research to enhance crop yields under drought conditions, a priority for scientists given its vital role in global food security. Our study explores the effects of using humic and chitosan treatments to alleviate drought stress during critical growth phases and their impact on crop yield and water efficiency. We employed four different irrigation strategies: full irrigation, 70% irrigation at the early vine development stage, 70% irrigation during the storage root bulking stage, and 85% irrigation across both stages, complemented by full irrigation in other periods. The plants received either humic treatments through foliar spray or soil application, or chitosan foliar applications, with tap water serving as a control. Our findings highlight that the early vine development stage is particularly vulnerable to drought, with a 42.0% decrease in yield observed under such conditions. In normal growth scenarios, foliar application of humic substances significantly improved growth parameters, resulting in a substantial increase in yield and water efficiency by 66.9% and 68.4%, respectively, compared to the control treatment under full irrigation. For sweet potatoes irrigated with 70% water at the storage root bulking stage, ground application of humic substances outperformed both foliar applications of chitosan and humic in terms of yield results. The highest tuber yield and water efficiency were attained by combining chitosan and humic ground applications, regardless of whether 70% irrigation was used at the storage root bulking stage or 85% irrigation during both the early vine development and storage root bulking stages.