Abstract
Potato is one of the most important legumes and constitutes a dominant portion of the global diet. Its physiological activities as well as the quantity and quality of its tubers are influenced by water stress. Herein, we evaluate the effect of several irrigation regimes on the recovery time of potato physiological activities and yield. The treatments were composed of -40 (dry) and -60 kPa (very dry) of soil matric potential (SMP) across three stress periods of 1 (1D), 3 (3D) and 7 (7D) days. A control treatment was included that considered -20 kPa of SMP during the experiment. The results showed a complete recovery of potato plants treated by applying a SMP of -40 kPa during 1 day when compared with the plant control. Although a decrease in physiological activities was observed, the potato plant was shown to consume 10\% less water in this scenario. Other treatments showed yield losses, especially the treatments under 7 days, in which plants did not fully recover. Based on the results of yield loss and water stress, a water deficit index (WDI) model was proposed. WDI values greater than 0.78 produced significant yield losses compared to the control. Therefore, the response time is a valuable measure for future research on the impacts of water stress on plants. Also, WDI is a promising index that can assist in forecasting the impact of water stress on the level of potato productivity.
Highlights
Potato is grown worldwide for its tubers and is a staple food in the global diet (Aliche et al, 2020)
This work consists of investigating the impact of water deficit intensity and duration on the physiological activity of potato plants at two specific development stages
We inflicted water stress treatments consisting of the application of −40 and −60 kPa of soil matric potential across three stress periods of 1 (1D), 3 (3D), and 7 (7D) days
Summary
Potato is grown worldwide for its tubers and is a staple food in the global diet (Aliche et al, 2020). Its production is of particular economic importance, with potato ranked fourth globally in food crops behind maize, wheat and rice (Djebli et al, 2020). Global production increased at a much higher rate with regard to other staple crops (Kreuze et al, 2020). In Canada, a 23% increase in potato production was observed from 2008 to 2018 (FAO, 2018). The province of Quebec is ranked fifth among the provinces of Canada in regard to production, with 12% of the total potato production for 2019 (Statistics Canada, 2019). In 2012, more than 19.4 million cubic meters of water were used for irrigation in Quebec (Statistics Canada, 2012). Climate changes may increase the use of irrigation to avoid periods of drought due to irregularity and poor distribution of precipitation
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