PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MOLECULAR INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE POTATO MINI-TUBERS PRODUCTION IN AEROPONIC SYSTEMS
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Date
2022-07-28
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University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore
Abstract
Availability of a good quality and disease free planting material at affordable price is a major constraint in potato cultivation and therefore, warrants different approaches. Among several approaches, aeroponic technology seems to be the most promising.
However, aeroponic technology requires maintenance of growth conditions both inside poly house and in aeroponic chambers for effective tuberization as the tuberization is greatly influenced by temperature, photoperiod, hormonal level and nitrogen status.
Towards producing quality and disease free mini-tubers under aeroponic system, misting cycles and nutrients formulations were standardized and followed in the entire study. Further, using less photosensitive cultivar identified based on allelic variations in CDF1 gene, temperature effect on tuberization was examined by exposing the root zone to regulated and unregulated emperatures with shoot zone exposed to poly house temperature. Accordingly, in normal growing season like rabi, 29 and 12 mini-tubers per plant were produced with and without root zone temperature regulation respectively. Similarly, even during non-optimal growing season like kharif, relatively a good number of mini-tubers were produced upon root zone cooling suggesting the importance of regulating root zone temperatures. Although root and shoot zone temperature regulation is important, cooling root zone seems to be more crucial. In addition, warm white and far-red LED lights have shown improved growth rates and tuber yield. Further, cytokinin application also showed increased mini-tuber production by enhancing the expression of tuberization genes. Such enhanced expression of positive and downregulation of negative regulators of tuberization were also noticed under root zone cooling and with light regulation. Finally, combined interventions of the said factors have significantly improved the mini-tuber production even under non-optimal kharif condition suggesting the importance of regulating all the growing conditions for effective tuberization and tuber yield in potato.