Agro-Geoinformatics, Potato Cultivation, and Climate Change

The agriculture sector is reeling under the pressures of population, land and water scarcity, diseases, disasters and the most challenging of them all, climate change. Although climate change is yet to be charged with affecting agriculture, but in recent years trends of change have been witnessed in various crop production, with a hint of climate's role in it. With the advent of technology, these trends have become easier to analyse and in certain cases predict too. Information Technology (ICT) tools like Geoinformatics are playing a profound role in the agriculture sector and is helping to understand and assess the various factors affecting the growth of crops along with finding out the alternative suitability parameters for better production and distribution. The main aim of this chapter on agro-geoinformatics is to look into this linkage between technology usage and better potato production during adverse conditions.

Impact of Global Climate Change on Potato Diseases and Strategies for Their Mitigation

The quality and quantity of the potatoes produced is directly affected by the climatic factors that prevailed during the crop season. It is also well established that abiotic and biotic stresses cause tremendous losses to the crop. Host plants and their pathogens are prone to various climatic factors like temperature, relative humidity, rainfall and CO2 which are behaving in erratic manner. Phytophthora infestans has adapted itself at higher temperature so there are chances to spread at a larger area. The other potato diseases like early blight, bacterial wilt, soft rot and viral diseases may also behave differently at elevated temperature and high rainfall. Viral diseases of potato are serious threat to potato industry as most of the viruses are transmitted by vectors and vector populations are bound to increase with these changed climatic conditions. Therefore, potato researchers need to simulate these conditions and devise mitigation strategies for sustained potato production.

Phytotoxicity of Oxidised and Reduced Nitrogen Aerosols on Potato (Solanum Tuberosum L.) Crop

In a field trial (2012), simulated aerosols: NH4Cl (reduced) and NaNO2 (oxidised) @ 10 & 20 kg ha-1y-1 (˜ 100 ppm & ˜ 200 ppm respectively), 1000 cm3m-2 of each along with a control were misted to population of Kufri Jyoti at different growth stages viz., vegetative (10-60 DAS), tuber initiation (60-90 DAS) and tuber bulking >90DAS). The higher dose of aerosols lowered nitrate reductase activity, nitrogen use efficiency, cell membrane stability, tuber yield, but increased photosynthesis, peroxidise activity significantly. The mechanisms of injury in terms of higher peroxidase activity and lower membrane stability of leaf cells have been elucidated. Foliar feeding of nitrogenous pollutant in the form of aerosols to plants at juvenile stage is important in addition to basal use of recommended fertilizers.

Improved Agronomic Practices and Input Use Efficiency for Potato Production under Changing Climate

In the emerging global economic order in which agricultural crop production is witnessing a rapid transition to agricultural commodity production, potato is appearing as an important crop, poised to sustain and diversify food production in this new millennium. Temperature and unpredictable drought are two most important factor affecting world food securities and the catalyst of the great famines of the past. Decreased precipitation could cause reduction of irrigation water availability and increase in evapo-transpiration, leading to severe crop water-stress conditions. Increasing crop productivity in unfavourable environments will require advanced technologies to complement traditional methods which are often unable to prevent yield losses due to environmental stresses. Various crop management practices such as improved nutrient application rate, mulching, raised beds and other improved technology help to raise the productivity. Conservation farming practices play important role to restore soil and enhancing soil health and play important role to combat climate change issue.

Nutrient Management for Sustainable Potato Production in India

Potato is important crop for solving food and nutritional security problem of growing population of India. Application of N in two split dose i.e. half at planting time and rest at time of earthing up produce higher yields and higher N recovery. At the time of planting, calcium ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulphate should be preferred by furrow application. Selection of suitable variety may play major role beside time and method of application in improving nutrient use efficiency. Balanced use of major and micronutrients plays an important role in improving quality of produce besides good yield. Potato based cropping system mostly shows build up of P and negative balance of N and K which may be overcame by organic residues recycling. Intensive cropping system has resulted in wide spread deficiency of secondary and micro nutrients particularly Zn and these must be applied on soil test basis. Integrated nutrient management is a must for an exhaustive and responsive crop like potato.

Diseases of Potato

Potato production is seriously compromised due to prevalence of a number of diseases and they are the major constraints in potato production resulting in significant yield reduction. Integrated disease management of potato includes regular inspection for healthy seed or nursery, crop production, correct identification of the problem, cultural practices (crop rotation, sanitation etc.), biological control, soil fumigation (if necessary), seed or nursery stock treatment and disinfestations of cutting tools. Due to the ever increasing number of new fungicide resistant fungal pathogens, proper and timely diagnosis of potato diseases is becoming paramount to effective disease management, and growers need up-to-date information to help make important decisions on optimal use and timing of pesticides and other control options.

Issues of Climate Change, Impact, and Adaptation Strategies in Nigeria

Climate change is a global problem affecting agricultural production, a good adaptation strategy for this phenomena should be sought for increase agricultural production. The study was conducted in Nigeria to assess the Impact of Climate Change on root and tuber crops production among farmers in Nigeria. Secondary data were used for the study, they were collected from NRCRI Umudike and other individual publications. The result shows that climate change had negative impact on root and tubers crops production including potato. Adaptation of Agriculture to climate change in the areas of crop and animal production, post harvest activities and capacity building, divers friction of livelihood sources through the use of different farming methods and improved agricultural practices will help to reduce the impact of climate change. Examples are establishment of forestry, generation of improved and disease resistance crop varieties addition of value into agricultural products and post harvest activities for climate change adaptation and sustainable development.

Towards the Development of Salt-Tolerant Potato

Soil salinity is a major constrain to crop production and climate change accelerates it. It reduces plant water potential, causes ion imbalance, reduce plant growth and productivity, and eventually leads to death of the plant. This is the case in potato. However, potato has coping strategies such as accumulation of proline, an osmoregulator and osmoprotector. In addition, leaching of salts below the root zone is preferred, exogenous application of ascorbic acid and growth hormones are practiced to combat salinity. Breeding and genetic engineering also play key roles in salinity management of potato. Varieties such as: Amisk, BelRus, Bintje, Onaway, Sierra, and Tobique were tolerant in North America, variety Cara in Egypt, Sumi in Korea and varieties Vivaldi and Almera in Mediterranean region. Transgenic lines of Kennebec variety, lines S2 and M48 also proved tolerance due to transcription factor MYB4 encoded by rice Osmyb4 gene.

Impact of Climate Change on Potato Production in India

Potato is a temperate crop and higher day temperatures cause some areas to less suitable for potato production due to lower tuber yields and its quality. Tuber growth and yield can be severely reduced by temperature fluctuations outside 5-30 °C. The rate of warming in last 50 years is double than that for the last century. Increase in temperature and atmospheric CO2 are interlinked occurring simultaneously under future climate change and global warming scenarios. If CO2 is elevated to 550 ppm the temperature rise is likely to be 3 ºC with decline in potato production by 13.72% in the year 2050. The changing climate will affect the potato production adversely due to drought, salinity, frost, flooding, erratic unseasonal rains etc. It may reduce seed tuber production, impact storage facility and potato processing industries. Therefore, the quantification of regional vulnerability and impact assessment is very important for the development of early warning on disease forecasting systems, breeding of short duration and heat, drought, salinity tolerant and disease resistant cultivars.

Crop Weather Interaction in Potato in South Bengal Plains

Potato is one of the main staple foods in West Bengal, where it ranks second in production after Uttar Pradesh. There is lots of variation in productivity of the crop. It is due to climatic variability which causes widespread disease infection in potato crop. The shifting of onset and withdrawal of monsoons has also proved to be a barrier in the productivity of the crop. The farmers are habituated to plant the crop within 15th of November; however this is being disrupted because of the shifting of withdrawal of monsoons. Potato is a thermo sensitive crop. The crop growth rate of potato is significantly affected by cumulative maximum and minimum temperatures. Leaf area index significantly decreased with the increase in cumulative maximum and minimum temperatures. Rainfall and relative humidity are two crucial factors that determine the incidence of late blight in potato, the most devastating disease in Bengal. Rainfall increased productivity by lowering soil temperature and reducing hydrolysis of starch respiratory losses from tubers.