Comparison of hybridization in-situ and on decapitation in glasshouse in potato

Abstract

Potato needs long days for flowering. Hence, in India hybridization for the potato-breeding programmes is carried out at the Central Potato Research Station, Kufri (320 Nand 770 E and 2500 above msl) that represents hill conditions, where potato crop is grown during summer, the season when potato can flower [1, 2]. But heavy rainfall and severe incidence of late blight disease during this period, reduce fruit setting and damage the berries before these are ready for harvest. To avoid these problems, hybridization in glasshouse/ polyhouse was advocated [3, 4]. But due to limited space, it is not possible to grow all the required parental lines in glasshouses. Decapitation of the female parents from field-grown plants at flowering stage and their use for hybridization in glasshouse by growing them in tap water or nutrient solution can be another alternative [5-9]. But in these studies comparison of hybridization on decapitants with that of intact plants under field conditions was not done [6, 7, 9] or different cross combinations were used in two methods [5]. Further, in these studies only percent berry setting was reported and the information on berry, seed and seedling characters was lacking. Hence, the present investigation was conducted to compare the efficiency of these two methods, that is, hybridization in-situ (in open field) versus on decapitation (in glass house).