Nutrient management for higher growth and yield of hydroponically grown potato seed tubers

The degradation of agricultural land, soil contamination and heavy use of nutrients is a prime hurdle to maintain the production and productivity of potato crop. In order to solve these problems, an experiment was conducted at the Agricultural Experimental Block of Shri Guru Ram Rai University in Dehradun to determine the optimal nutrient concentrations for hydroponically grown potato seed tubers. The experiment was conducted by using five different levels of macronutrient concentrations (10:10:10, 15:15:15, 20:20:20, 25:25:25 and 30:30:30 g/l NPK) with four replications in Randomize Block Design. Macronutrient was applied to plants at every eight days of interval. A constant concentration of micronutrients was provided to plants at an interval of fifteen days. The growth and yield parameters of potato plants were recorded to know the effect of different treatments. Findings indicated that, the different macronutrient composition significantly affects the growth ad yield of potato. Most of the morphological and seed tuber yield characters of potato, like plant height, number of leaves, fresh weight, chlorophyll content and dry matter accumulation were recorded maximum with application of 25:25:25 g/l NPK. The treatment of 25:25:25 g/l NPK ratio showed the highest yield, achieving 318.57 grams per plant, demonstrating an effective balance between vegetative growth and tuber development.