Evaluation of the effect of the number of stems in three varieties of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) on the yield of minitubers from Generation 2 in the greenhouse

Abstract

The research was conducted from September 2019 to February 2020, in the greenhouse of the School of Agronomic Sciences of the University of El Salvador. The study consisted of evaluating the effect of the number of stems (two, three and four stems) and a control in three varieties of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) “Atlanta”, “Granola” and “Soloma”, on the yield of minitubers of generation 2, using hydroponics techniques, with the purpose of producing basic seed. The research used a randomized complete block design with a bifactorial arrangement, with 12 treatments distributed in four randomized replicates. The Tukey test for comparison of means was applied and the statistical software InfoStat was used for the analysis of the results. In the reproductive phase, minituber production per variety, number of minitubers per stem, average weight of minitubers, number of minitubers per m2 and yield kg/m2 were evaluated. The minitubers were classified according to weight into the following categories: first, second, third and fourth. The results showed that the potato variety “Atlanta” had the best yield with an average minituber weight of 317.81 g. The highest number of minitubers was obtained with the variety “Soloma”, which had an average of 36.38 minitubers per plant.