This work investigates the egg plant variety response to saline irrigation practice in soilless culture. Three inert substrates, sand, pozzolana, and perlite, are utilized, in the absence and with the presence of soil conditioner Barbary-Plante G2. Saline water with electrical conductivity of around 6.0 dS/m was used for irrigation. The results of this work confirmed that saline irrigation practice could be successfully applied for egg plants in soilless culture. The average water consumption of egg plants was about 2853 m3/ha. The average yield, gained from five harvests, was about 66.2 t/ha, while the average dry matter production was about 8.45 t/ha. In average, the yield water use efficiency was about 23.5 g/L and the biomass water use efficiency was about 3.0 g/L.
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The results of this work indicated that both sand and perlite are more appropriate than pozzolana for growing the egg plants in soilless conditions under saline irrigation practice. In general, the presence of Barbary-plante in inert substrates did not result in significant improvement of yield water use efficiency of #28 per cent# was observed for pozzolana substrate while the increment for perlite and sand was lower of 14 and #8 per cent#, respectively.
