Improving potato crop tolerance to drought stress at medium elevation by gamma rays irradiation

Potato crops use lots of water to grow well and produce high yield. Unfortunately, potatoes are grown mostly in a place where irrigation is not available. Furthermore, they have a very shallow rooting system that makes it very sensitive to drought. Drought significantly affects crop growth and tuber yield. It is therefore important to have more tolerant potato cultivars to drought. Treating potato seeds with gamma irradiation and challenging the crops with water deficit is one of many approaches available to get a more tolerant potato cultivar to drought. The objective of this research was to study the effect of gamma irradiation, PEG8000, and their interaction on crop growth and tuber yield. Potato seeds exposed to gamma irradiation (0, 30 Gy) were grown at the glass house then exposed to water stress induced chemically by PEG8000 (0, 2, 4, and 8%). Variables measured included time of crop emergence, percentage of crop emerged, percentage of surviving crops, number of tubers produced, diameter of tuber, and weight of tuber. The results showed that gamma irradiation improved crop growth and yield in both experiments, water stress treatments chemically reduced crop growth and yield, and irradiating potato seeds with 30 Gy gamma rays significantly improved crop performances when exposed to water stress. It is recommended to carry out further study to evaluate whether the trait of being tolerant to water stress after gamma rays irradiation is inherited to the next seeds.