Yield and resistance of potato cultivars with colour flesh to potato late blight

Abstract

The resistance to potato late blight (as AUDPC - the area under the disease progress curve) and yield were evaluated in precise field experiments with 13 colour-fleshed potato cultivars. Red Emmalie and Blaue Anneliese were the most profitable cultivars of potatoes with coloured flesh, the overall yield did not differ statistically from the control cv. Agria. Cv. Blaue Anneliese resistance to potato late blight was considerably better than both control cultivars, other 2 cultivars HB Red and Red Emmalie were similar to cv. Agria. Surprisingly, cv. Russet Burbank was found to be more resistant than most cultivars tested. A statistically significant weak dependence (r = 0.36) between the percentage of infestation of plants in the T6 evaluation date (6-8 August in individual years) and the yield was detected, the slightly stronger (r = 0.40) was the correlation between AUDPC values and total yields.

Keywords

• solanum tuberosum
• yellow-, purple- and red-fleshed tubers
• phytophtora infestans