2.2. Treatments and experimental design
Irrigation lines were installed on two sides of each compartment and individual plants were drip irrigated through two emitters placed on both sides of the plant, 0.20 m away from the stem. Nineteen days after transplanting (64 days after sowing (DAS)), plants were subjected to the following three irrigation treatments. Full irrigation on both sides of the rootzone similar to commercial irrigation (CI) considered as control, irrigation with half the volume of CI on both sides of rootzone considered as DI, and half of irrigation volume in CI applied to one side of rootzone at each irrigation time designated as PRD. In the PRD treatment, irrigation was shifted from wet to dry rootzone every day. On average, CI plants received 4 l of water per day while DI and PRD received half of this. The experiment had a completely randomised design with the three treatments replicated five times and each replication had three plants.