Effects of heat stress on potato productivity and nutritive quality

Abstract

Potato, Solanum tuberosum L., is the most important non-grain food crop in the world, and a major vegetable crop in Serbia. It is generally considered a cool-season crop and highly susceptible to high temperatures. Elevated temperatures in the environment affect potato plants' growth and development by slowing the sprout emergence, reducing the number of stolons, impeding tuber initiation, reducing tuber bulking and interfering the onset of tuber dormancy. Tuberization is optimal at average daily temperatures in the 15-20 °C range and above this range declines, although moderately elevated temperatures of 20-25 °C may enhance potato foliage growth and the net photosynthesis. Besides reducing the number and mass of tubers, high-temperature stress affects the total and marketable yield of potato by causing tuber disorders and altering tuber processing and nutritive quality. The problem of potato heat-susceptibility is gaining more interest in the last decades due to occurring global climate change. The breeders' efforts have been intensified for selection of new, tolerant potato genotypes, as well as genomics', proteomics', and metabolomics' investigations of potato heat response.