Authors: A. K. GORBUNOV, researcher, head of the Laboratory of elite seed potatoes,
A. A. VASILIEV, doctor of agricultural sciences, scientific secretary,
Ural Federal Agrarian Research Center of Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
(112A Belinskogo Str., 620142, Ekaterinburg, phone 8 902 611-76-09, 8 906 870-53-12, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
Keywords: potatoes, planting time, planting depth, productivity, quality of tubers, dry matter, starch, nitrates.
Abstract. The effect of the planting period and the depth of seed placement on the yield and quality of potato tubers has been studied. During the period of research, the potato yield was mainly dependent on the level of mineral nutrition (factor contribution – 58.7 %), varieties (10.5 %), density (20.0 %) and planting time (7.5 %). The depth of embedding of the seed material had a significant but significantly less effect (0.5 %). The content of dry matter and starch in tubers was determined by the planting period (63.2 and 50.5 %, respectively), nutritional status (20.5 and 33.4 %) and genotype (5.1 and 9.3 %), to a lesser extent depended on the depth of landing (0.8 and 2.1 %). The accumulation of nitrates in potato tubers depended on the planting period (57.7 %), variety (17.4 %), nutrition level (12.4 %) and planting density (2.8 %). The optimal agro-technical potato planting period was established – the second decade of May. Landing in the third decade of May reduced the content of dry matter in tubers (“Rosara” – on average by 1.7 %, “Kuzovok” by 1.3 %) and starch (“Rosara” by 1.60 %, “Kuzovok” by 1.26 %), while the accumulation of nitrates increased by 1.26 and 1.52 times, respectively. The late planting (June 5–12) led to a decrease in potato yields (“Rosary” – 11.3 %, “Kuzovok” – 15.1 %), and dry matter content in tubers (by 2.7 and 2.9 %) and starch (at 1.87 and 2.11 %, respectively) compared with the planting on May 12–15. In contrast, the content of nitrates in tubers, on the con- trary, increased by 2.05 and 2.19 times. The optimum depth of seeding of seed tubers depended on the planting period. When planting potatoes in the second decade of May, the tubers had a significant advantage at a depth of 5–6 cm, and when planting late May and early June – at a depth of 10–12 cm.
