Potato Research

DOI 10.1007/s11540-009-9128-3

Cultivation Practices and Potato Cultivars

Suitable for Organic Potato Production
Jannie Elisabeth Hagman & Anna Mrtensson &
Ulf Grandin

Received: 18 November 2008 / Accepted: 14 May 2009

# EAPR 2009

Abstract To identify the most important agronomic measures and cultivar traits in
Swedish organic potato production, multivariate analyses were performed on a set of
data from a series of field trials carried out in Sweden during a 7-year period. The
effects of soil parameters, cultivar, year and geographical location on potato
characteristics were investigated. Soil parameters including fertility level had strong
and significant effects on potato characteristics, explaining 53% of total variation.
Variables related to the duration of haulm growth were other dominant factors in the
variation. While P and K fertilization increased yields, N fertilization had little effect
on yield and a negative effect on the time to emergence. The N requirement of
potatoes ranges from 2.5 to 5.9 kg ha1 per ton of tuber yield and was met in these
trials. The results implied the timing of N application is important for yield. It was
concluded that the importance of P and K fertilization is underestimated in organic
production, and that the most important cultivar trait in achieving acceptable yield is
long-lasting foliage, which is a characteristic of cultivars resistant to Phytophthora
infestans. Three of the cultivars tested (Lady Balfour, Cicero and Sarpo Mira) had a
yield >3.5 kg m2, which is high in Swedish organic production.

J. E. Hagman (*)
Department of Crop Production Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences,
Uppsala, Sweden
e-mail: jannie.hagman@vpe.slu.se
A. Mrtensson
Department of Soil and Environment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
U. Grandin
Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences,
Uppsala, Sweden

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Keywords Cultivar . Fertilization . Organic production . Phytophthora infestans .

Potato . Yield loss

Introduction
In Sweden and several other countries in western Europe, government policy
initiatives and consumer demand have resulted in an increase in organic farming
during recent years (Hansen et al. 2001; Lynch et al. 2008; Eurostat 2009). The
proportion of organically certified agricultural production in Sweden has steadily
increased in recent decades, but organic potato production has not increased. Instead,
the acreage of organic potato production decreased by 30% during the period 2001
2006, and is now 2.5% of the total potato acreage (SCB 2002, 2007; SJV 2002).
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is an important staple food in Sweden and is deeply
rooted in Swedish cultural traditions since it can be produced in most parts of the
country. The decrease in organic potato production in Sweden can most likely be
explained by several constraints, for example the higher production costs for organic
potatoes and the lower yields compared with those of conventionally produced
potatoes. In addition, organic production can be unpredictable owing to environmental factors (e.g., climate and disease pressure), which can give large fluctuations
in quantity and quality. Losses due to insect and pest damage and overall poor
quality can be high (Hansen et al. 2001; Lynch et al. 2008; Maggio et al. 2008).
A particular threat in potato production is the serious late blight disease caused by the
oomycete Phytophthora infestans. The disease affects both foliage and tubers and can
destroy an entire field within a few days. In conventional production, the disease is
controlled by fungicides and the crop is sprayed several times during the growing
season. There are no efficient agents to control late blight in organic potato production,
the only methods available being to rely on resistant cultivars and/or cropping measures
such as the use of early maturing cultivars and presprouting to advance maturity so
the crop is ready early in the season before late blight has had a chance to strike
(Karalus and Rauber 1997; Larsson and Hagman 2007; Mller and Reents 2007).
Conventional potato production is linked to heavy use of pesticides and nutrient
leaching, prompting the Swedish Board of Agriculture to fund a series of organic
potato trials to stimulate organic production.
The objective of this paper was to identify the agronomic measures and cultivar
traits important in achieving a good organic potato crop. The study is based on a
series of field trials carried out in Sweden over several years to screen different
potato cultivars for their suitability for organic production and to provide farmers
and advisers with more information about the different cultivars. Many quality traits
must be present to make a successful table potato. Important properties are consumer
acceptance, yield, storability and resistance to diseases such as late blight. Cultivars
entering this series of field trials were selected (in descending order of importance)
for high resistance to potato late blight, earliness (in combination with resistance to
late blight) and cooking quality. The resulting multidimensional dataset was
analysed using multivariate techniques that can be used to accurately identify both
sensory and quality traits in relation to cultivar and cultivation conditions
(Arvanitoyannis et al. 2008).

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Materials and Methods

Trial Set-up
The trials were conducted at five sites (AE) (Table 1) spread over Sweden from the
south (56.02, 14.06) to the north (63.81, 20.24). In total, 21 trials were
conducted during a 7-year period (20012007). Sites A and B were situated in potato
production areas with many surrounding potato fields, while the other three sites
were situated in areas with less intensive potato production. During individual years,
the same potato cultivars were included in all experiments, but different cultivars
were tested in different years. Each cultivar was generally tested for 3 years. In total,
17 cultivars were tested during the period (Table 2). The number of trials and trial
sites in operation varied between two and five per year. The seed potatoes for the
trials were produced annually under organic management (SJV 2007) at a site
outside Uppsala (59.80, 17.68) to avoid carryover effects on the seed, for example
differences in physiological age.
The trials were managed according to common practices in organic potato
production. Soil content of N, P and K was analysed before fertilization. However,
data on soil N were obtained for only 93 of the 106 plots included in this study. The
fertilizer applied was farm manure or biological residues permissible in organic
farming. Total N, P, K and mineral N (NH4+, NO3) content of these organic
fertilizers was determined before application. The manure was applied in the spring a
couple of weeks prior to planting in amounts aiming at 90-100 kg NO3-N ha1in the
south of Sweden and 70 kg NO3-N ha1 in the north.
The levels of P and K varied according to which manure was used. For P the
levels were around 40 kg ha1 in southern Sweden and 15 kg ha1 in the north, while
the corresponding amounts for K were 110 kg ha1 in southern Sweden and 50 kg
ha1 in northern Sweden.
The seed potatoes were presprouted and planted with a semiautomatic potato
planter (Underhaug). Weeds were mechanically controlled by harrowing and hoeing.
Emergence and flowering of the different cultivars were assessed. The plots were not
treated against potato late blight. Tubers were harvested following standard farming
practices in the area. When necessary, haulms were killed by crushing them 2 weeks
before harvest. Plots were harvested with a potato lifter (Juko Midi, model 2000).

Table 1 Geographical coordinates and years for sites included in the statistical analyses
Trial sites

Coordinates

Trial year
2001

2002

2003

2004

56.02, 14.06

56.64, 12.95

57.13, 18.23

60.29, 15.98

63.81, 20.24

2005

2006

2007

X
X

X
X

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Table 2 Cultivars included in the field trials during the period 2001-2007 and in the statistical analyses
Cultivar

Abbreviation Maturitya

Country of
origina

Year
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Appell

App

Intermediateb

Sweden

Asterix

Ast

Intermediate to
late

Netherlands

Cicero

Cice

Early to
intermediate

Netherlands

Ditta

Ditta

Early to
intermediate

Austria

Escort

Esc

Early

Netherlands

Eve
Balfour

Eve

Intermediate

UK

Fresco

Fres

Very early to
early

Netherlands

Lady
Balfour

Lady

Very late

UK

Matilda

Mati

Intermediate to
late

Sweden

Ovatio

Ovat

Intermediate to
late

Netherlands

Princess

Princ

Very early to
early

Netherlands

Raja

Raja

Intermediate

Netherlands

Sarpo
Mira

Sarpo

Very late

Hungary

Satina

Sati

Early to
intermediatec

Germany

Superb

Sup

Intermediateb

Sweden

Symfonia Symf

Intermediate

Netherlands

Ukama

Ukam

Very early to
early

Netherlands

Verity

Verity

Intermediate

UK

X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X
X

X
X

X
X
X

According to the European Cultivated Potato Database (http://www.europotato.org) when nothing else is
noted

Communication with breeder (SW seed)

Beschreibende Sortenliste Kartoffel 2003 (Bundessortenamt, Hannover, Germany)

The field trials were laid out as a randomized complete block design with four
replicates and with six to eight cultivars in each trial. The plot size was 1618 m2, with
some variation at the different trial sites. Parameters assessed in the field were time to
emergence (50% of plants emerged), days to flowering and number of stems per plant.
The physiopathological conditions in plots were assessed once a week from the first
appearance of late blight in the area. Each plot was assessed for late blight and nonspecific necrosis according to the scale developed by Anonymous (1947). After
harvest, tuber yield and size distribution were assessed for each plot. Harvested tubers

Potato Research

were sorted into five size fractions: <40-, 4055-, 5565-, and >65-mm tuber diameter.
Each year, raw data from the individual field trials were compiled using the MIXED
procedure of SAS software (SAS Institute 1996), resulting in one accurate mean value
per variable and field trial for use in further calculations. Dry matter concentration was
determined in a sample of 200 g of graded tubers of 4555-mm size. Cooking quality
was assessed by cooking 25 peeled tubers. When cooked, the tubers were cut in half
and, after cooling, the incidence of sogginess, darkening and disintegration was
assessed by visual ratings according to the following norms of the Swedish Table
Potato Control Agency: sogginess was assessed by exerting pressure with the thumb
on the tubers and dividing soft tubers into the classes weak or strong sogginess; the
actual numbers of tubers showing darkening were recorded; and disintegration was
assessed as either weak disintegration with cracks in the outer parts of the tuber, or
strong disintegration with tubers falling apart. The incidence of weakly/strongly soggy,
darkened and weakly/strongly disintegrated tubers was then expressed as a percentage
of the total. The incidence of late blight and other internal and external diseases was
determined in a sample of 50 tubers. This was first done by visual inspection of the
surface of the tubers and then tubers were sliced and the interior examined for
incidence of Phytophthora infestans in the tubers. These tests were performed for each
cultivar at every trial site.
Statistical Analyses
Multivariate methods were used to assess the effect of soil variables, cultivar, year of
trial (20012007) and geographical coordinates (x and y in the Swedish national
grid) on various potato characteristics. These potato characteristics were days from
planting to emergence, days from emergence to 2% necrosis, days from emergence
to 50% necrosis, days from emergence to haulm killing, total yield, yield of tuber
fraction <40 mm; three variables describing cooking quality: sogginess, postcooking
darkening and disintegration; and incidence of Phytophthora infestans in the tubers.
Soil characteristics were described by the amounts of N, P and K fertilization,
ambient levels of soil P and K, soil type described by binary dummy variables
coding for sandy soil (Soil_Sa), sandy loam (Soil_Lo), silt soil (Soil_Si), and binary
variables on earlier crops comprising spring cereals, winter cereals (CerW), ley,
sugar beet, and peas. Finally, cultivar was represented by 17 cultivars.
To assess the importance of different sources of variation, the explanatory data
were divided into four datasets: (1) soil properties including fertilization, (2) cultivar,
(3) year and (4) geographical location. The contribution to total variation of
variations 14, individually and in combination, was assessed by a partial
redundancy analysis (RDA) with variance partitioning, as implemented in the R (R
Development Core Team 2008) package vegan (Oksanen et al. 2008). To avoid
disturbing collinearity and redundancy in the combined explanatory dataset, the
years 2001, 2005 and 2007 had to be excluded from the analyses. One cultivar
(Appell) and the soil variable coding for silt soils (Soil_Si) also had to be deleted
owing to collinearity. Following the suggestion by Bocard et al. (1992), the
geographical coordinates were expanded to nine variables by adding the terms of a
cubic trend surface regression. However, all terms but the original x and y were
collinear and had to be excluded prior to the variance partitioning.

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The relationships between individual soil variables and potato characteristics were
assessed by principal component analysis (PCA) and RDA using the program
CANOCO version 4.5 (ter Braak and milauer 2002). To avoid collinearity, Soil_Lo,
Soil_Si and CerW had to be deleted prior to the analysis owing to indications of
high-variance inflation factors in preliminary runs. The significance of each
remaining soil variable was tested using forward Monte Carlo testing (P<0.05,
999 permutations). In this analysis, cultivar was added as a supplementary variable.
This means that each cultivar was added to the ordination after the main analysis had
been performed to illustrate the relationship to variables included in the ordination.

Results
Initially, relationships between soil variables, potato characteristics and cultivars
were screened using PCA (Fig. 1). The results showed a substantial variation, and
indicated that both soil variables and potato characteristics were important for
describing differences between the performance of different cultivars. The different
variance components were quantified using multivariate variance partitioning, which
showed that soil characteristics had a strong and significant effect on potato
characteristics, explaining 53% of the total variation (Fig. 2). Cultivar and year of
experiment had minor effects on potato characteristics (15 and 8% of the total
variation). Geographical location accounted for only 2% of the total variation and

Fig. 1 Principal component analysis (PCA) showing the unconstrained relationships between soil
variables (title case) and potato characteristics (lower case). Potato cultivars (italics) were added as passive
variable, i.e. after the analyses had been performed. Axis 1 explains 31% of the variation and axis 2
another 15%. See Table 2 for the abbreviations of the cultivar names. Beet sugar beet, CerS spring cereals,
Fert _K amount K fertilization, Fert_P amount P fertilization, Fert_N amount N fertilization, Ley ley, Pea
peas, Soil_K ambient level of soil K, Soil_P ambient level of soil P, Soil_Sa sandy soil, days_2 days from
emergence to 2% necrosis, days_50 days from emergence to 50% necrosis, emerg days from planting to
emergence, haulm days from emergence to haulm killing, phyt_tub incidence of Phytophthora infestans in
the tubers, qal_So sogginess, qual_Da postcooking darkening, qual_Di disintegration, yield total yield,
yield<40 yield of tuber fraction <40 mm

Potato Research

Fig. 2 Variance components explaining the variation in potato characteristics. Circles represent explained
variation and the area outside the circles represents unexplained variation. Values show the variation
explained by each circle section or intercept individually. Values less than zero are not shown

was therefore excluded from the variance partitioning in Fig. 2 to reduce the
complexity of the illustration. The fraction of variation that could not be explained
by these four sets of explanatory variables was 26%. The relatively low contribution
from year shows that the results differed between the years included in the study, but
that this contribution to the total variation was close to negligible compared with the
variation caused by soil variables.
As the variance partitioning showed that soil variables were the dominant source
of variation, the importance of individual soil variables alone on potato characteristics was assessed in a RDA ordination, (i.e. not including year and cultivar in the
analyses) (Fig. 3). The Monte Carlo permutation test showed that sandy soil and
earlier growth of spring cereals had non-significant relationships with the potato
characteristics examined here and they were therefore removed from the explanatory
dataset. The final results showed that variables related to duration of haulm growth
were the dominant factors for variation in the dataset, as indicated by their high
correlation to axis 1 (Fig. 3). The main explanatory factor related to duration of
haulm growth was ambient soil P. Yield was also relatively highly related to axis 1,
but in addition was affected by P and K fertilization to a much higher degree than
haulm growth. Phosphorus fertilization and K fertilization were also positively
correlated with Phytophthora infestans incidence in tubers. The ordination indicated
a very weak relationship between ambient soil P and P fertilization, and a weak
correlation between ambient soil K and K fertilization. These results were confirmed
in independent tests of the correlation between these two pairs of variables (P, r=
0.17; K, r=0.30; P>0.05 for both). Thus, irrespective of ambient soil levels, P
fertilization and K fertilization were the most important variables for yield. In
contrast, N fertilization had little effect on yield and had a negative effect on

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Fig. 3 Redundancy analysis (RDA) showing potato characteristics (lower case) and significant soil
variables (title case) as vectors for continuous variables and points for binary variables. Cultivar (italics) is
added as a passive variable for help in visual interpretation of the diagram (abbreviations in Table 2).
Isolines indicate the value of the variable yield (kg m2) in the ordination space. Axis 1 explains 20% of
the variation and axis 2 explains 7.6%

emergence, i.e. additional N fertilizer delayed emergence. The negative effect of N

was also indicated by the peripheral position of peas as the preceding crop in the
ordination diagram. A univariate correlation test between yield and N fertilizer (r=
0.04, P>0.6) reconfirmed that these two variables were uncorrelated in this study.
As the results of the multivariate analyses showed that yield and N fertilization had a
weak relationship, we tested whether this pattern was an effect of different levels of
fertilization of different cultivars. However, there were no significant differences in
the amount of N applied to different cultivars (analysis of variance, F19.94 =0.6, P>
0.9). We also tested the effect of ambient soil N on yield, using a subset of the data
for plots where data on soil N were available (n=93). The results showed that soil N
was also uncorrelated to yield (r=0.01).
Eight cultivars (Fresco, Symfonia, Appell, Ditta, Matilda, Asterix, Satina and
Ukama, in decreasing order) were negatively related to yield, while the other cultivars
were more or less positively related to the yield vector in the RDA (Fig. 3). This is
illustrated by the perpendicular projection of the cultivars onto the yield vector and its
elongation to the right of the origin in the ordination diagram. The same eight
cultivars, with the addition of Ovatio, also showed the strongest negative relationships
to the persistence of foliage. In our experiment, all three variables expressing time to
decay of foliage were positively related to yield, i.e. the longer the period before the
foliage started to decay, the higher the tuber yield. It is known that foliage decay in
organic potato production is mainly caused by late blight. This suggests that cultivars
with a high resistance to late blight have the greatest potential for high yield.

Potato Research

Discussion
Our main objective was to identify important cultivation factors and cultivars
suitable for organic production. In this respect, suitable was defined as a cultivar
giving a reliable crop, acceptable yield and tubers with good cooking qualities.
One of the most important results from the RDA of the data was that neither N
fertilization nor soil N was significantly related to yield. This contradicts the results
from many other studies. It is frequently reported that N has great importance for
potato tuber yield (van Delden 2001; van Delden et al. 2003; Roinila et al. 2003;
Mller et al. 2007). The N requirement of potatoes ranges from 2.5 to 5.9 kg N ha1
for each ton of tuber yield (Munoz et al. 2005) and this was met in the trials
described in this paper. Haulm development is said to be strongly affected by N
supply/availability in the first weeks after emergence (Millard and MacKerron 1986;
Harris 1992; Vos 1995). Increased N supply is reported to give a faster full canopy
and longer leaf area duration, and thus increased yields (Millard and MacKerron
1986; Grindlay 1997). It has also been reported that N is the main factor limiting
yield in organic potato cultivation (Vos 1995; Finckh et al. 2006; Haase et al. 2007;
Mller et al. 2007). In addition, many factors have synergistic interactions, for
example irrigation, N fertilization and farming system (Maggio et al. 2008). Findings
that support our results are that N-use efficiency appears to be higher in low-input
systems (Finckh et al. 2006) and that the potato crop responds to limited N levels by
maximizing light-use efficiency (van Delden 2001). An important aspect is that N
availability is difficult to predict if the N is applied in organically bound form, as is
the case in organic cultivation systems (Varis et al. 1996; Gastal and Lemaire 2002;
van Delden et al. 2003), and the timing of N release is crucial for good results.
Increased N availability in conjunction with tuberization can extend the vegetative
growth period and delay tuber development, both of which lead to decreased yield
(Burton 1966; Alva 2004; Love et al. 2005). The long-term effects of manure in the
whole crop rotation may have a greater influence on potato quality than the shortterm effects, owing to the slow release of nutrients and the beneficial effects of
manure on soil biological activity (Roinila et al. 2003). The results of the present
study show how difficult it is to synchronize crop demand with N availability. In
Sweden, the vegetation period is short and therefore delayed tuberization can have a
negative effect on yield. Nitrogen fertilizer levels are generally low in both organic
and conventional farming in Sweden compared with further south in Europe. In the
field trials described in this study, fertilizer was applied in spring, a couple of weeks
before planting. This could have resulted in high soil mineralization of the N applied
and in turn increased plant-available N to a level where N was no longer the main
yield-limiting factor. From the results, it can be concluded that N was not a yieldlimiting factor.
Potassium nutrition can be a constraint in organic potato production as there are
few organic fertilizers rich in K (Finckh et al. 2006). The strong correlation between
yield and K and P fertilization in this study (Fig. 3) indicates that these nutrients
were the most restricted and potentially yield limiting.
Duration of haulm growth, measured as the number of days from emergence to 2,
50 and 100% necrosis or haulm killing, was the dominant factor explaining variance
in the dataset, and time to foliage decay showed a positive correlation with yield.

Potato Research

Haulm degradation was related to outbreaks of late blight, but could also be
attributed to other diseases or stage of maturity. According to Finckh et al. (2006)
and Speiser et al. (2006), the selection of cultivars with a high resistance to late
blight (Phytophthora infestans) is an important strategy in organic potato production.
It was also one of the characteristics for which cultivars were chosen in the present
study. Our RDA showed a long period before foliage decay to be associated with
high yield. This suggests that resistance to Phytophthora infestans is an important
trait in cultivars suitable for organic production.
The RDA also indicated a relationship between yield and number of days
between planting and emergence. A long period between planting and emergence
was associated with low yield, which agrees with findings that presprouting of
seed tubers has a positive impact on tuber maturation by accelerating crop
development (Karalus and Rauber 1997; Mller and Reents 2007; Paffrath and
Milz 2008). This suggests that measures that promote fast emergence, e.g., soil
preparation or presprouting, have a beneficial effect on tuber yield. However the
opposite can also occur, as presprouting can make the plants more susceptible to
both Phytophthora infestans and Alternaria solani (Zarzynska and Goliszewski
2007), which reflects the difficult decisions that have to be taken in organic potato
production.
Early maturing cultivars have early tuber bulking and hence a chance to
achieve significant tuber yield before the crop is infected by Phytophthora
infestans, and therefore maturation type was another trait for which cultivars were
selected in these trials. Unfortunately there is an interaction between maturation type
and susceptibility to late blight, with early maturing cultivars often being more
susceptible (Toxopeus 1958; Ross 1986; Visker 2005; Razukas et al. 2008). This
was observed in the present study, where early maturing cultivars were often the first
to develop late blight. However, the RDA could neither verify nor reject the
possibility that early maturing cultivars could achieve acceptable yields by escaping
late blight (Fig. 3). The highest yields were achieved by both late and early maturing
cultivars.
Cooking quality variables were of subordinate importance in the ordination
diagram, primarily indicated by the short vectors for cooking quality variables
(Fig. 3). If cooking quality had been a major variance component related to the
explanatory variables in this dataset, these variables would reflect the inherent
cooking quality of different cultivars. However, this was not the case and instead
variables related to growth dominated the ordination. The passively added cultivars
showed, for example, that cv. Symfonia was one of several cultivars negatively
associated with disintegration and darkening. Cv. Symfonia has inherently high
levels of disintegration and darkening, but the ordination rather suggested the
opposite. However, RDA is a constrained ordination, which means that the response
variables (lower case in Fig. 3) are constrained by the variance structure in the
explanatory variables to show the relationship between response and explanatory
variables. In the unconstrained ordination on the same dataset (Fig. 1) the cooking
quality variables were up-weighted, while the other variables largely remained as in
the constrained ordination. Thus, cooking quality was an important variance
component in the response dataset, but it is merely an inherent characteristic of the
cultivars rather than an effect of nutrients.

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On the basis of the results of this study, we conclude that the importance of P and
K fertilization is underestimated in organic production in Sweden today and that the
most important cultivar trait in achieving acceptable yield is a long period before
onset of foliage decay, which is present in cultivars resistant to Phytophthora
infestans. Three of the cultivars tested (Lady Balfour, Cicero and Sarpo Mira) had a
yield of more than 3.5 kg m2, while five cultivars (Eve Balfour, Escort, Superb,
Ovatio and Princess) yielded more than 3 kg m2, which is a high yield for organic
potato production in Sweden. All of these cultivars except Princess have very good/
good resistance to Phytophthora infestans. Among these cultivars, Cicero, Sarpo
Mira, Superb, Ovatio and Princess are considered tasty and suitable as table
potatoes.

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