Effects of thiourea on dormancy break and yield production of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) minitubers of Agria cultivar in the glasshouse

Subject Areas : Agroecology Journal

Sardar Germchi ¹ , Mohammad Bager Khorshidi Benam ² , davod hasanpanah ³

1 - Member of Young Researcher’s Club, Islamic Azad University, Ardabil Branch, Ardabil, Iran.
2 - Assistant Prof., Azarbayejan-e-Sharqi Agricultural and Natural Resource Research Center, Tabriz, Iran.
3 - Scientific Board of Ardabil Agricultural and Natural Resource Research Center, Ardabil, Iran.

Received: 2009-02-03 Accepted : 2009-12-13 Published : 2010-04-21

Keywords: Minituber, Potato, dormancy, Solanum tuberosum, thiourea, Ttuber weight,

Abstract :

This experiment was conducted to study the effects of thiourea application on dormancy break of minitubers in Agria cultivar of poatato in the glasshouse in 2006. Thiourea was used at three levels as 0, 0.5, and 1% solutions  using  a  completely  randomized  design  with  three  replicates.  After  breaking  the  dormancy  of minitubers, characters like days to sprouting, length of the longest sprout, and sprout numbers were measured. Then, minitubers planted in pots and characters such as days to emergence, main stem numbers, and plant height were measured. Tuber numbers per plant, yield and mean tuber weight per plant was also calculated at harvest. The results of variance analysis displayed that thiourea affected all attributes, significantly. Application of 1% thiourea  shortened  duration  of  sprouting  from  60  to  26  days,  increased  sprout  numbers  from  1.8  to  3.1, accelerated sprout length from 1.8 to 4.1 cm, shortened days to emergence from 60 to 29 days, increased stem numbers from 1.2 to 2.4, lengthened plant height at least 30.6 cm, increased tuber numbers per plant from 5 to 9, decreased mean tuber weight per plant at least about 22.1 gr and enhanced total tuber weight per plant from 183 to 202 gr. Therefore, application of 1% thiourea is advisable for breaking minituber dormancy of potato for a short time and consequently, resulted in rapid emergence, and more minituber numbers per plant and higher tuber yield in Agria variety as compared with the non-treated minitubers.

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