Abstract
In this work, we studied agro-morphological parameters that could be used to define variaton among early, mid-early, mid-late and late potato cultivars, cropped in the main season by quantitaive and qualitative parameters (characters of mother tubers, vegetation cover, height of plants, number of leaves, number of true leaves, number of stems, number of stolons, lenght of first stolon, median diameter of first stolon, caliber of first tuber, final number of tubers per plant and final yield per plant). For the main agro-morphological characters, there were a great variation compared to the control Spunta. Challenger and Fabula showed the heighest caliber of mother tubers (49.16 mm), while heighest weight of seed tubers was determined on cv. Alegria (125.7 g). Among other characters, challenger produced the largest leaf area (9940.3 mm²). Panamera cultivar has considerable plant height (13.77 cm), the heighest number of leaves per plant (63.33) and also the heighest number of true leaves (48.48). Moreover, Panamera has the largest lenght of first stolon with 8.66 cm, (6.16 cm for Spunta). It has also the largest value of median diameter of first stolon with 2.17 mm and followed by Mondial (2.23 mm), Bellini (1.63 mm) and Liseta (2.01 mm). The difference among the cultivars in terms of median diameter of first stolon was statistically significant (P≤0.05). Liseta has the largest value of caliber of first tuber (37.4 mm), followed by Bellini (37.71 mm), while, Spunta has presented the lowest measures (13.36 mm). For final yield per plant, Bellini outyielded other cultivars with 0.96 kg per plant. Key words: Potato cultivars, earliness character, variation, agro-morphology, main season.
Highlights
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.), perennial herb belongs to the Solanaceae family, and shares the genus Solanum with at least 1000 other species (Rousselle et al, 1996; Milbourne et al, 2007)
We studied agro-morphological parameters that could be used to define variaton among early, mid-early, mid-late and late potato cultivars, cropped in the main season by quantitaive and qualitative parameters
The crop is grown throughout the year, except for a brief period in early August, the possible growing seasons are early, medium-early, medium-late or main season and late
Summary
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.), perennial herb belongs to the Solanaceae family, and shares the genus Solanum with at least 1000 other species (Rousselle et al, 1996; Milbourne et al, 2007). It ranks as the most important crop in the world after wheat, rice and maize (Cromme et al, 2010), with a global production of 325 million tonnes. In Tunisia, potato is an important horticultural crop. In 2012, 23 200 ha were cropped with potato, gave a production of 340 000 tonnes. The crop is grown throughout the year, except for a brief period in early August, the possible growing seasons are early (crop is planted in the northeast coastal areas from November through mid-January and harvest occurs from early March through mid-May), medium-early (crop is planted in the frost-free coastal areas from October to november and harvested from January through midMarch), medium-late or main season (crop is planted in all potato producing areas from mid-January to midMarch, with harvest from mid-May though mid-July) and late (crop is planted from mid-August through midOctober and harvested from mid-November through the end of February)
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