COMPARISON OF POTATO PROGENIES FOR PRODUCTION OF SEEDLING TUBERS AND COMMERCIAL YIELD

Abstract

Two experiments were established in El Lindero, La Perla county, Veracruz. The first experiment was conducted in a greenhouse to evaluate seedling tuber production by seven potato progenies. In the second experiment, the seedling tubers harvested in the greenhouse were evaluated under field conditions. In both experiments, most progenies compared quite favorably with check clones. The analyses of variance showed significant genotypic effects for the yield parameters considered. In the greenhouse, the best progenies were TPS7xTPS67, MFIIxTPS67 and MFIxTPS13, with 520, 306 and 290 tubers/m² , respectively; thus overyielding the best check by 100, 30 and 23 %, respectively. In the field, although progenies were statistically similar to the checks, again the progenies compared quite favorably to the checks. The best ranking progeny was H-2018, which yielded over 23 t ha^-1; but there was wide variation among progenies, with LT8xTPS13 as the least yielding with less than 10 t ha^-1. These results show the potential of true potato seed for the production of high quality tuber seed, which in turn seems an adequate alternative to costly conventional certified tuber seed. However, it is important to conduct in situ evaluation of true seed progenies in order to select the best materials for each location.