Assessment of Potato Mother Tuber Vigour Using the Method of Accelerated Ageing

Abstract

The vigour of seed material determines the seed’s future productivity. Although there are several tests for determining seed vigour, there is a lack of standardization for the vegetative forms of seed material, including seed potatoes. We evaluated the vigour of mother tubers of 14 selected potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cultivars using the method of accelerated ageing, that is, tubers were placed under conditions conducive to their physiological ageing from harvest to planting, in which the most important was the appropriate temperature (18ºC). The decrease in yield caused by such treatment in relation to the optimal storage conditions is a measure of vigour. As traits of tuber ageing, we evaluated the ways in which mother tubers sprouted, the lack of emergence on the plots and yield reduction in the mother tubers subjected to conditions conducive to physiological ageing from harvest to planting. The assessment of vigour was presented on a 9-point scale for ralative yield. There were 3 cultivars that maintained high growth vigour of seed tubers while ageing in the light (mark 9) and 4 cultivars ageing in darkness (mark 8). The vigour of potato mother tubers was not correlated with either the length or mass of sprouts, or the percentage of sprouting eyes, nor was it correlated with the duration of the crop cycle of the individual cultivars. Application of this method allows potato cultivars to be characterized in the same way, regardless of the year of research and the set of cultivars being evaluated.