Yield and quality of selenium-rich potatoes grown from 10-15 mm tubers

Small mini-tubers up to 15 mm can be used for growing high-quality food potatoes saturated with scarce trace elements, for example, selenium, which is a powerful immunomodulator and antioxidant. This requires determining the optimum concentration of selenium applied to plants. The authors studied the yield and basic quality indicators of selenium-saturated food potato tubers grown in 2019-2021 from non-standard mini-tubers with a size of 10 to 15 mm. The research was conducted in 2019-2021 on varieties Gulliver, Ametist and Grand grown on sod-podzolic medium-cultivated sandy loam soil. The experiment course included two options: control – without treatment, experiment – leaf treatment of plants with sodium selenite. The studies were carried out in accordance with the existing methods. As a result of the experiment, the average gross yield was 17.3 to 18.7 t/ha, the marketability in terms of tuber size was 96.5 to 97.4%. In the experiment samples, the selenium content in tubers averaged 0.040 to 0.0375 mg/kg over three years, which does not exceed the maximum permissible concentration in potatoes of 0.5 mg/kg. When using leaf treatment with sodium selenite, the increase in the selenium content in tubers relative to the control was 0.08 to 0.10 mg/kg of raw weight. Leaf treatment with sodium selenite at a dose of 3 g/ha did not significantly affect the quality of potato tubers, but increased the selenium content in tubers to 0.06 to 0.10 mg/kg of raw weight. The profitability of growing food potatoes from small non‑standard mini‑tubers obtained by the aerohydroponic method and leaf treatment with sodium selenite, depending on the variety, is 16.1 to 28.6%. To obtain optimum selenium content in tubers, it is proposed to increase the concentration of sodium selenite and continue research on increasing yield and improving the quality of tubers.

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