Indices and their applicability under high temperature in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cultivars

The increasing temperature is going to be more vulnerable for cool season crops like potato which requires an optimum productivity temperature of 18 to 20 °C. Thus, breeding for heat tolerance has become very important. Therefore, some previously used indices for abiotic stress tolerance have been used in our study for screening of high temperature stress tolerance in potato. Three high yielding (Kufri jyoti, Kufri megha and Kufri pokraj) and two local (Rangpuria and Badami) commonly grown potato cultivars were selected for our experiment. Potato cultivars were sown under normal condition and two high temperature conditions (polyhouse and early season) and indices such as HSI (heat susceptibility index), HTI (heat tolerance index), GM (geometric mean) and HII (heat intensity index) were used to evaluate the performance of the cultivars under all the three temperature conditions. The positive and significant correlation between HTI (heat tolerance index), and GM (geometric mean) as well as with tuber yield under all the conditions revealed that these indices were efficient in selecting the high temperature tolerant potato cultivars. We recorded the equal applicability of these two indices for both high yielding and local group of potato cultivars. Our study revealed that cultivar Kufri megha and Rangpuria showed higher heat tolerance between high yielding and local cultivars respectively.