Comparison of Aeroponics and Conventional Soil Systems for Potato Minitubers Production and Evaluation of Their Quality Characters

Two different propagation procedures including aeroponics and soil systems were compared for the minitubers production in potato. The minitubers were evaluated for several quality characters. The plant materials were from three cultivars, Agria, Marfona and Savalan. The plantlets were grown in aeroponics and soil production systems at a plant density of 100 plants per m-2 and stem length, root length, stem diameter and yield were measured in both experiments. In the other experiment, germination, stem length and yield were measured for minitubers which were produced in aeroponics production system. Analysis of variance indicated that the main effects of cultivar and production system were significant for stem length, root length, stem diameter and yield. Also cultivar by production system interaction was highly significant at 0.01 probability level for stem length, root length and minituber yield of the plants. The aeroponics system led to increase in stem length, root length, stem diameter and yield. Cultivars Agria in terms of stem length and Marfona in terms of root length, stem diameter and minituber yield were the most favorable genotypes obtained from aeroponics production system. Minitubers of Marfona had more yield and better quality characters. It seems that cultivar Marfona could be considered as the most favorable genotype due to high performance in minituber production and having quality characters after planting.