Potato and Tuber Crops

Haulm Cutting

• Delaying the haulm cutting by spraying the crop with insecticides to control aphids has been found to adversely affect the quality of seed (Vashisth et al., 1990).
• Haulms (foliage) of the seed crop should be cut close from the ground at fixed date for a region in the month of January or whe n aphid levels reach 3-5 aphids per 100 compound leaves.
• However, Kumar et al., 2001 reported that delay in dehaulming resulted in increase in tuber numbers of all grades.

  

• The crop with dehaulming done 80 days after planting increased the potato yield of all the grades.
• This higher yield might be attributed to the continuous translocation of photosynthates from tops to the tubers ove r a longer period of time, which increased the size as well as number of tubers.
• This led to the suggestion that removal of haulms could be delayed advantageously to maintain yield and health standards of seed crop.
• Chanbey and Singh (2001) adopted three methods of dehaulming viz., haulm cutting, haulm pulling and paraquat spray and found that haulm pulling method was effective in reducing the virus incidence without affecting the yield whereas haulm cutting method provided reasonable chance to mechanically infect the healthy plants and also through vector upon re growth.