Abstract
Production of virus-free plants, along with growth and frequent harvesting of tubers without destroying plants are believed to be the main factors associated with the increase in the yield and production efficiency of potatoes. The present study aimed to produce virus-free potato plantlets and draw a comparison between aeroponic system and soil culture concerning the production efficiency of minitubers from healthy plants. Additionally, an aeroponic system was designed and built herein under the production conditions in Iran. In this study, the combination of thermotherapy and shoot tip culture was used for the production of virus-free plantlets of Satina cultivar, followed by micropropagation to increase the number of virus-free plantlets. Subsequently, the derived plantlets were cultivated either in the soil or under aeroponic conditions for growth and tuber production. Certain parameters, including the main stem length, root length, number of stems, area of the largest leaf, minituber number, and weight of each plant were evaluated. The results showed that the plants grown under the aeroponic condition had a significantly higher number of shoots (6.50) and higher shoot length (124.87 cm), roots length (49.50 cm), and leaf area (16.45cm2) compared to those of soil cultivation, in which these values were 4.25, 113.50 cm, 22.62 cm, and 9.08 cm2, respectively. In fact, the plants grown applying aeroponic system produced a significantly higher yield (112.78 vs. 17.07 g), minituber weight (11.21 vs. 2.81 g), and number (10.05 vs. 6.05) than those cultivated in soil. The aeroponically grown plants had a significantly higher number of roots and stem, as well as higher roots length and leaf area than those cultivated in the soil. In the current work, easy access to nutrition, further root aeration, and frequent minitubers harvesting without destroying plants could be considered as the most important factors indicating aeroponic system superiority. Hence, this system could be introduced as a suitable method with higher efficiency than soil cultivation for potato minituber production. On account of the possibility of selecting tubers with the desired size at the harvest time, the harvested minitubers in the aeroponic group had a more uniform size compared with those in the soil culture group. The fact that, during the harvest, the tubers were not scratched and the soil particles did not stick to the surface of the minituber, not only reduced the cost and time of preparation process after harvesting, but also significantly contributed to increasing the marketing characteristics of the tubers.
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Each of authors contributed to this study as following: SH performed the overall of experiments, analyzed the data, and prepared the manuscript. RZ designed the project and supervised the experiments.
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Hasrak, S., Zarghami, R. Comparison of minituber production in designed aeroponic system and soil cultivation. Acta Physiol Plant 45, 57 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-023-03537-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-023-03537-4