Minitubers production of four potato Cuban varieties in greenhouse with zeolite as substrate

Abstract

The obtaining of original seed of national potato varieties (Solanum tuberosum L.) is of great importance. The objective of the present work was to obtain minitubers from four national potato varieties in a greenhouse with zeolite as substrate. The plants in vitro propagated of the varieties 'Grettel', 'Yuya', 'Ibis' and 'Marinca' were planted and received cultural and phytosanitary attention according to the protocol existing at IBP. Harvest was performed at 75 days of culture and the total number of minitubers and the number of minitubers with a diameter greater than 15 mm were quantified for each plant. Plants and tubers showed the typical characteristics of each variety under zeolite substrate culture conditions. The highest number of minitubers per plant was achieved in the 'Yuya' and 'Ibis' varieties with 3.84 and 3.52 respectively. For the number of minitubers available as original seed (>15 mm), the 'Yuya' variety was superior with 82.3%. The culture conditions with zeolite substrate allow to obtain minitubers of potatoes of the four varieties from plants in vitro cultured. 'Yuya' and 'Ibis' showed the best results and potentially could be incorporated into the national seed production program in Cuba. Keywords: agamic seed, ‘Ibis’, ‘Grettel’, ‘Marinca’, Solanum tuberosum, ‘Yuya’