AICRP on Potato Annual report 2015-16

Abstract

All India Coordinated Research Project on Potato initiated in 1970-71 is operating through 17 State Agricultural Universities based centers, 7 CPRI based centers and 1 voluntary center. In this 44th Annual Report of AICRP (Potato), experiments conducted during summer/kharif 2015 in hills/plateau and rabi 2015-16 in the plains have been reported. There were 17 experiments in Crop Improvement, 10 in Crop Production and 14 in Crop Protection at various locations. Efforts have been made to collect, consolidate, analyze and compile the data collected in these experiments in this report. The significant achievements during the year in Crop Improvement are the climatic zonation of potato growing regions, the quantification of different agronomic traits to yield improvement and stability analyses of varieties & advanced hybrids in different environments. Promising hybrids for release as varieties have also been identified. Under Crop Production, detailed studies on the applied-yield, uptake-yield as well as applied- update relations were continued which led to the development of the software PENMAS. Experiments on omission plot technique were also continued and nutrient requirements for targeted yield at different locations were worked out. Detailed micro nutrients analysis has been carried out in collaboration with ICAR-IIHR and the results indicated that the micronutrient formulation “Potato Special” has promise. Under Plant Protection the salient achievements include validation of the Indoblightcast DSS, developing fungicide schedules for late blight management for Hassan and schedules for controlling early blight as well as for mites at Pune. Material for this report was received from 7 CPRI based and 1 their colleagues assisted in compilation and interpretation of the results.