Potato Research

, Volume 35, Issue 3, pp 261–269 | Cite as

Variation in the duration of tuber dormancy within a seed potato lot

  • M. K. Van Ittersum
Article
Accepted:

Summary

The variation in duration of dormancy within a seed tuber lot was studied over three years by harvesting individual plants of cvs Diamant and Désirée from field plots and by storing the tubers at 18°C. The variation in dormancy within a tuber lot was large (especially for cv. Diamant) and was mainly caused by variation within plants.

For cv. Diamant there was a close negative relation between dormancy and the cube root of tuber weight, whereas for cv. Désirée a relation with tuber weight was almost absent.

The duration of dormancy of a seed lot comprising tubers with a narrow range in weight can be well described by two parameters. It is proposed to maintain the moment of 80% sprouting as the criterion for the end of dormancy of a tuber lot and to characterize the spread in dormancy duration by the time lapse between 10% and 90% sprouting.

Additional keywords

cultivar Solanum tuberosum L. tuber weight 
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1992

Authors and Affiliations

  • M. K. Van Ittersum
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Field Crops and Grassland ScienceWageningen Agricultural UniversityWageningenThe Netherlands

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