ABSTRACTDaily measurements of suspended sediment discharge undertaken on the Euphrates River at Haditha by the Iraqi Ministry of Irrigation during the period 1974 to 1982 provide an estimate of the mean annual suspended sediment load of 1.4×107tyear-1. This is equivalent to a specific suspended sediment yield of approximately 60tkm-2year-1.The availability of an eight year series of daily suspended sediment measurements for this gauging station has prompted the authors to evaluate the potential for using a suspended sediment rating curve to estimate the suspended sediment load of this major river. Analysis of the total data set indicates that although considerable scatter exists in the concentration/discharge relationship there is no clear tendency for the rating plot to exhibit a shifting relationship in response to changing season or a contrast in sediment transport between rising and falling stages. Annual sediment loads calculated using a variety of rating relationships show close correspondence with the measured loads, and a single straight line relationship fitted to the entire data set provides the closest agreement between estimated and measured loads.The potential for using a programme of infrequent sampling coupled with a suspended sediment rating curve to estimate the suspended sediment loads at Haditha has been evaluated by abstracting hypothetical data sets corresponding to a sampling frequency of two, three and four samples per month from the overall data-base. Simple straight line rating relationships fitted to these data provide estimates of annual suspended sediment load and the mean annual load within±20% and±5% of the measured values respectively. Although several existing studies have demonstrated that the rating curve approach is unlikely to provide accurate estimates of suspended sediment load for small-and medium-sized drainage basins, the approach may offer greater potential for larger river basins where the spatial and temporal aggregation associated with an increase in scale reduces the complexity of suspended sediment behaviour.