Evaluation of Potato Variety Characteristics During Storage

Abstract

The potato (Solánum tuberósum) is one of the main food crops of the Siberian region. The research goal was the selection of potato varieties of different maturity periods suitable for storage. We analyzed the yielding capacity and storage of potatoes in the Kemerovo Region from 2016 through 2020. Over 5 years of research, the range of yield variation of early maturing varieties averaged 11.9%. The fluctuations over the years were from 6.2% to 18.9%. It was found that the decrease dynamics of potato gross har-vest was similar to the decrease dynamics of the sown areas and yields. Potato storability studies were carried out on the farm of KFKh Tumanov A.A. The farm is located in the steppe zone of the Kuznetskaya Depression. The soil type is the leached heavy loamy chernozem with the hu-mus layer of 20-25 cm and pHof 5.6-5.8. The preceding crop was wheat. The research targets were potato tubers of medium early and early maturity varieties. The following was determined: potato tuber quality, starch weight per-centage, ascorbic acid content according to L.E. Gunar, and dry solids according to GOST (Russian National Standard). Mathematical processing was carried out ac-cording to B.A. Dospekhov. It was found that the quality of potatoes placed for storage depended on the cultivation conditions and varietal characteristics. All varieties lost some dry solids, vitamin C and starch during storage. The maximum losses were found regarding the number of pota-to tubers affected by dry rot. It was found that after 4 months of storage, the natural tuber weight loss aver-aged 1.8% for early-maturing varieties; it decreased to 6.6% over 9 months of storage; the weight loss averaged 2.0% for medium-early varieties (after 4 months); 5.4% -after 9 months; that was by 4.8% and 3.4% more, respec-tively.