Effect of Thiourea on Dormancy Breaking and Yield of Potato (Solanum Tuberosum L.) Minitubers Marfona cv. in Greenhouse

摘要

This experiment was conducted for studying thiourea application effect on potato minitubers dormancy breaking in Marfona cultivar in greenhouse in 2008. Thiourea in three levels as 0, 0.5, and 1% arranged in a completely randomized design in three replicates. After dormancy breaking, attributes like as days to sprouting, length of the longest sprout, and sprout number measured. Then minitubers planted in pots and days to emergence, main stem numbers, and plant height measured. Tuber number per plant, yield and mean tuber weight was calculated after harvesting. Results showed that thiourea had significant effect on all attributes except of sprouts number and length of sprouts. Applying 1% thiourea decreased days to sprouting date from 102 to a bit less than 90 days, decreased days to emergence from 38 to 28 days, increased stem number from 1.2 to 2.1, increased plant height at least 28 cm, increased tuber number per plant from 4 to 8, decreased mean tuber weight per plant at least 25 g and increased total tuber weight per plant from 150 to more than 185 g. Therefore, applying 1% thiourea is recommendable for minitubers dormancy breaking because of its effect on rapid dormancy breaking, rapid emergence, and increasing minituber number per plant and increasing tuber yield in Marfona minituber production.