P. N. Atreya , A. Srivastava , S. M. Shakya and S. M. Shrestha

DOI

ABSTRACT

A field investigation was carried out during winter season of 2007/08 in the upland of Horticulture Farm of Institute of the Agriculture and Animal Science, Rampur, Chitwan, Nepal to evaluate the effect of seedling tuber size and level of potash on ware potato production of a clonal progeny of hybrid TPS, HPS II/67. The experiment was laid out in a completely randomized block design having two factors with sixteen treatment combinations replicated thrice. The treatment comprised of four seedling tuber size (15 g) and four level of potash (30 kg K2O/ha, 60 kg K2O/ha, 90 kg K2O/ha and 120 kg K2O/ha). Different sizes of seedling tuber and level of potash significantly affected emergence, growth, yield and yield attributing characters. Growth parameters like plant height, number of stem per hill, stem diameter, number of leaves per plant were found to be influenced significantly due to variation in seedling tuber size and level of potash. Most of the growth parameters increased with an increase in seeding tuber size and level of potash. An increase in the level of potash increases the crop's resistance power against late blight and also helps in earlier tuber initiation. The highest tuber yield (1.36 kg) per plant was obtained in treatment combination of >15g seedling tuber size and 120kg K2O/ha. Increasing the size of seedling tuber and level of potash increases the yield of different classes of tuber. However, potash is responsible for increasing the tuber size. The maximum tuber yield was obtained when 10-15 g seedling tuber was used as a planting material and 120 kg K2O/ha applied. Similarly, the treatment in combination of 10-15 g seedling tuber size and 120 kg K2O/ha was found most effective that gave the highest potato yield (30.03 mt/ha).