ISHS Acta Horticulturae 729: III Balkan Symposium on Vegetables and Potatoes
APPLYING POTATO LOSSES IN AN INNOVATIVE METHOD FOR ENHANCING POTATO YIELD AND PROFITABILITY IN IRAN |
| Authors: | J. Lameii Haravani, M. Ainollahi Ahmadabad |
| Keywords: | potato, losses, small and normal tubers, propagation techniques, economic evaluation |
| Abstract:
The exact statistics of losses is not clear in Iran but it is assessed at almost 30 percent for agricultural products on average. Potato is one of the products having high losses in Iran. In potato production small tubers (smaller than 35 mm) are considered as losses because of low marketability characteristics. This kind of losses is about 5 to 7 percent of potatoes in Iran. This study was carried out in order to offer a solution for reducing potato losses. Meanwhile, an innovative method was used for meeting this goal so that small tubers were used as substitutes for seed tubers in potato production and the results were successful and satisfactory. This research was performed in two different experiments during three years (1999-2001) at Agricultural Research Center of Zanjan in northwest of Iran. In the first experiment cultivar Agria was investigated in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with 7 treatments and 4 replications during two years (1999-2000). The treatments for this experiment were: T1: one small tuber; T2: two small tubers; T3: three small tubers; T4: four small tubers; T5: one normal tuber; T6: half a normal tuber; and T7: two halves of a normal tuber. Treatments T2 and T3 from the first experiment were selected as superior treatments. In the second experiment responses of three potato cultivars named Agria, Diamant and Ditta were studied against the two aforementioned treatments and the treatment using one normal tuber as control in a Split Plot Design during one year (2000). The results obtained from simple and combined analyses and mean comparison using Duncan’s test showed that there is no significant difference in yield, seed tuber percentage and dry matter percentage among the normal tubers and the treatments that used two and three small tubers. The average number of main stems produced showed a significant difference in both experiments. In addition, the interaction of cultivar and size of tuber was not statistically significant. In other words, applying small tubers in potato cultivation instead of normal ones not only does not decrease products yield but also saves agricultural inputs and resources and increases product profitability. On the other hand, the economic evaluation of treatments indicated that utilizing losses (small tubers) instead of normal sized ones saves seed use as much as 190 percent, decreases seed costs for farmers 3.7 times and promotes total revenue of potato growers by 3.3 times. Furthermore, this innovation has economies on area under cultivation as much as 23,900 hectares without diminishment in potato production. Eventually, this approach produces more than 500,000 million kilocalories extra energy that meets physiological needs of some 220 million people per day. | |
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