Yield of five potato varieties in Temporary Immersion Bioreactors (TIB)

Abstract

The potato ( Solanum tuberosum L.) is important as both a food and a source of economic activity in Peru. However, potato production is limited by seed quality and other biotic and abiotic factors. We explore a new alternative method for producing prebasic seeds of Peruvian potato varieties known as temporary immersion bioreactors (BIT). The process of producing potato microtubers using BIT consists of two phases: proliferation and microtuberization. During the proliferation phase, we seeded six nodal segments of three nodes in a liquid culture medium with 30 g of sucrose under a photoperiod of 16 light hours and eight dark hours. This phase also included an irrigation cycle of five minutes every three hours for 30 days. During the microtuberization phase, the conditions were changed to a medium with 80 g of sucrose in darkness, and the same irrigation cycle was used for 60 days. Under these conditions we obtained 20, 18.4, 13.4, 13.4, and 4.6 microtubers of the varieties Peruanita, Canchan, Capiro, Unica, and Yungay, respectively.