Potato First to third week practices

First week to third week-

Analysis of soil

Potatoes can be produced on a wide range of soils, ranging from sandy loam, silt loam, loam and clay soil. Well drained sandy loam and medium loam sols, rich in humus are most suitable for potato. Alkaline or saline soils are not suitable for potato cultivation. They are well suited to acidic soils (pH 5.0 to 6.5) as acidic conditions tend to limit scab disease.

Black Scurf (Rhizoctonia solani)

The infected plants killed, stem canker may also be formed. Affected plants may form aerial tubers. On tubers, black sclerotial bodies are formed. It is a soil as well as tuber borne disease. 

Control Measures-

1. Always sow certified seeds 

2. Treat the seed tubers with any organo mercurial fungicides containing 6 per cent mercury {agallol, aretan, emisan etc.) for about 5 to 10 minutes before the planting and also seed tubers before keeping in the cold storage. 

3. Dip the tubers in 1.75 per cent solution of sulfuric acid for 20 minutes. 

4. Apply Brassicol at 30 kg per hectare in the soil at the time of sowing. 

5. Apply sawdust at 25 q/ha with recommended doses of nitrogen at least 15 days before sowing.

Season and Climate requirement: 

Planting Time: To secure high yields, it is essential to plant the potatoes at the optimum time. The best time of planting is when the maximum and minimum temperatures are from 30°C to 32°C and 18°C to 20°C, respectively. The following time schedule should be followed for obtaining good yields. 

a) Early crop-25th September to 10th October 

b) Main crop-15th October to 25th October.

Methods of Planting: 

There are three methods of planting in India: 

1. Planting on ridges: 

After preparation of field, ridges are made at a distance of 45-60 cm with the help of spade, bullock carts or by tractors. Planting of potato is done on the ridges manually. 

2. Flat method:

 Planting of potato is done on the flat surface in shallow furrows. Ridges are made after germination when plants attain 10-12 cm height. This method is suitable for light soils. Later on two to three earthings are done to make the ridges thick. 

3. Planting potatoes on flat surface followed by ridges: 

In this method field is prepared and then shallow furrows are opened on the flat surface. Potatoes are planted in furrows and immediately after planting tubers, small ridges are made. Later on these ridges are made thick by earthing up of the side soil.

Seed Rate: The seed requirements for an acre on the basis of seed size are given below: 

• Large size- 10-12 q/acre 
• Medium size- 7-10 q/acre 
• Small size- 4-6 q/acre.

Selection of Variety / Planting material:

Cultivar	Tuber characters and reaction to biotic and abiotic stress	Region of adaptability
Kufri Kisan	Large, round, white, deep eyes with prominent eye brows	North Indian Plains
Kufri Kuber	Medium, oval, tapering towards crown end, white, medium deep eyes. Resistant to PLRV & immune to PVY	North Indian plains and Plateau region
Kufri Kumar	Medium, oval, tapering towards heel end, white, fleet eyes. Moderately resistant to late blight	North Indian hills
Kufri Kundan	Medium, round-oval, flattened, white, medium deep eyes. Moderately resistant to late blight	North Indian hills
Kufri Red	Medium, round, red colour in cortex, medium deep eyes.	North eastern plains
Kufri Saved	Medium, round, white, deep and picked red-purple eyes.	North Indian plains
Kufri Neela	Medium, round, white, medium deep eyes. Moderately resistant to blight.	South Indian hills
Kufri Sindhuri*	Medium, round, red, deep eyes. Moderately resistant to early blight and tolerant to PLRV. Slow rate of degeneration. Can tolerate temperature and water stress to some extent.	North Indian plains
Kufri Alankar	Large, oblong, white, fleet eyes, tubers turn purple on exposure to light. Field immune to race “O” of late blight.	North Indian plains
Kufri Chamatkar	Large, oval, slightly flattened, white fleet eyes.	North Indian plains & Plateau region
Kufri Jeevan	Medium, oval, white, fleet eyes. Moderately resistant to early blight, field resistant to late blight and resistant to wart.	North Indian hills
Kufri Jyoti*	Large, oval, white, fleet eyes. Moderately resistant to early and late blight, resistant to wart. Slow rate of degeneration	North and South Indian hills and North Indian plains.
Kufri Khasigaro	Medium, round oval, white, deep eyes. Resistant to late blight and moderately resistant to early blight.	North eastern hills.
Kufri Naveen	Medium, oval, white, fleet eyes. Field resistant to late blight and immune to wart.	North eastern hills
Kufri Neelamani	Medium, oval, flattened, white, fleet eyes, tubers turn purple on exposure to light. Moderately resistant to late blight.	South Indian hills
Kufri Sheetman	Medium, oval, white, fleet eyes. Resistant to frost	North western plains

Propagation: 

• Potato is mostly cultivated by planting tubers. 
• Purity of the cultivars and healthy seed tubers are the primary requirements for a successful crop. However, seed tuber is the costliest input in potato cultivation. The tuber seed should be disease free, well-sprouted and 30-40 g each in weight. It is advisable to use the entire seed tuber for planting. Hill tuber seeds are split into pieces and planted late in winter when they do not decay due to mild temperatures. 
• The main objectives of cutting large size tubers are to reduce the cost of seed and to obtain uniform sprouting. 
• Tubers should be cut longitudinally through the crown eye and the weight of the cut piece should be around 30-40 g. 
• Usually the seed tubers are cut with a knife just and treated with a fungicide (Captan or thiram @ 3g/litre of water) before planting. Before cutting the seed tuber, the knife should be disinfected with Potassium Permanganate solution. 
• The shortage of good quality seed tubers, high seed cost, transportation of bulky potato seed, and virus infiltration in seed tubers are some of the important problems associated with use of seed tubers as planting material.

True Potato Seed (TPS) 

• To overcome the above problems True Potato Seed (TPS) is used as planting material. TPS is a botanical seed developed in the berry of the plant as a result of fertilization. 
• In TPS technique, the normal seed rate (2.5 t/ha) of potato is drastically reduced to only about 200g of TPS, thereby, saving huge quantities of food material for table purposes. 

Land preparation: 

The land is ploughed at a depth of 24-25 cm and exposed to the sun. The soil should have a higher pore space and offer least resistance to tuber development. Well decomposed FYM (25-30 t/ha) is mixed with the soil during last ploughing.

Bio fertilizers:

• Bio fertilizers not only played an important role in maintaining good health of the plants, but also served as a natural source of plant nutrient to increase productivity. 
• Some of the bio fertilizers are Pseudomonas, Trichoderma, Phosphate solubilizing bacteria (PSB) are applied at 5kg per acre along with FYM at the time of land preparation.

Dormancy Breaking- Cut the tubers in pieces having at least three healthy eyes and dip in 1% solution of thiourea for one hour. The planting should be done just after treatment or kept in wet gunny bags for one night. 

Method of planting potato

• Furrows of 40-50 cm should be opened. Apply 50 per cent of recommended dose of nitrogen, full dose of recommended phosphorus and potassic fertilizers 10 cm away from both furrow and tubers.
• Then place the tubers at an interval of 20 cm.
• Provide light irrigation immediately after sowing.

Apply basal dose of 1 bag Urea, 5 bag DAP & 2 bag MOP with sulphur 10 kg, Ca & Mg 5 kg each/acre and micro-nutrients for better developments of tubers.

Second to third week- Apply second dose of urea (1 bag)/acre after that give irrigation in potato field.

Cut Worms (Agrotis spp, Euxoa spp) 

They cut the sprouts at ground level. They feed only at night. They also attack tubers and make holes, thereby reducing market prices. 

Control Measures- 

1. Spray the crop with dursban 20 EC at 2.5 ml per litre of water or drench the plants, where the damage is noticed. 
2. Apply phorate 10 G granules at 10 kg I per hectare on soil around the plants and rake the soil thereafter. 
3. Use only well rotten farmyard manure.