EFEITO DA REDUÇÃO DO ESPAÇAMENTO NA PRODUÇÃO DE BATATA (Solanum tuberosum L.)

Abstract

To obtain greater profitability of the potato crop, it is necessary the efficient use of soil, water availability, luminosity and nutrients, being the spacing management, both between rows and in the plant population, the most suitable option for this. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of different spacing between rows and between plants on yield, economic viability and quality of potato tubers) for cultivars Atlantic and Ágata. The treatments consisted of three spacings between rows (0.5, 0.65 and 0.8 meters) and two spacings between plants (0.25 and 0.20 meters). The following were evaluated: stems per plant, shoot dry mass, leaf area index (LAI), productivity and economic viability. The different spacings had no effect on the number of stems per plant average dry weight for the cultivar Ágata. The Atlantic cultivar had the lowest dry mass in the spacing of 0.50 meters between rows and 0.20 meters between plants, and the highest number of stems for the spacing of 0.80 meters between rows and 0.20 meters between plants. There was interaction of the spacing for the productivity of Cultivar Agata, the spacings 0.50-0.20 m and 0.65-0.20 m showed superior performance to the others. The highest values of (LAI) were observed with the reduction of the spacing in both cultivars, as well as the productivity, which was higher in the spacing with 0.50 meters between rows for the two cultivars, showing that the spacing management can benefit the productivity. The treatments with smaller spacing had higher production costs, but with their higher productivity, their adoption becomes economically viable.