Potato and Tuber Crops

Advantage of Plains Produced Over Hill Seed

Advantages of Producting Seeds on Plains Over Seeds Produced on Hills

The seed produced in the plains under seed plot technique has the following advantages over the hill seed

• It is usually free from most of the soil and tuber borne diseases common in hills, as the pathogens do not survive in the hot tropical summer climate of plains.
• Seed of locally adopted varieties can be produced on the larger areas.
• Seed tubers are not dormant due to long cold storage period between harvest and next years planting.
• Transport is also no problem as the seed is available locally.
• Seed Production Technology
• Field Requirements
• For seed potatoes, a field with soil texture varying from loamy sand to loam is preferred.
• Light texture offers ease in mechanical operations, water management and harvesting.
• Clay soil is difficult to manage and invariably soil sticks on the surface of tubers reducing its lustre and appearance (Saini and Singh, 1993).
• Potato crop does well in a soil pH of 4.8 to 5.4.
• Seed crop of potato in a field, where the crop has been grown for a number of years, maybe avoided to minimize infestation by various soil borne diseases.
• Continuous cropping with potato in a sick plot for two years increased the intensity of common scab by 65.5 per cent in the second year (Singh and Jeswami, 1987).
• Wilting of potato plant due to Pseudomonas solanacearum was the most common disease in plots where the crop was grown for more than three years (Misra, 1989).
• Bacterial wilt of potatoes is serious in heavy clay soil in West Bengal with crops like chilli, tobacco, jute and banana serving as host for the causal organisms (Khatna and Mukherjee, 1987).
• Ploughing the fields and keeping the land open during summer months in plains and during winters in hills reduces incidence of soil borne diseases.
• The practice was effective in controlling bacterial wilt and brown rot by 50 to 100 per cent (Shekhawat et al., 1990).