Marketable Yield of Potato and Its Quantitative Parameters after Application of Herbicides and Biostimulants

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is grown in over 160 countries. Weed competition and environmental stressors during the vegetative growth stage significantly impact crop yields. An experiment was conducted from 2012 to 2014 in Poland to assess the effect of herbicides linuron + clomazone (L+CH) and metribuzin (M) as well as herbicides mixed with biostimulants (linuron + clomazone and algae extract of Ecklonia maxima—auxins and gibberellins (L+CH+E) and metribuzin + sodium p-nitrophenolate, sodium o-nitrophenolate and sodium 5-nitroguaiacolate (M+S)) on weed infestation, marketable yield and yield components of the following three table potato cultivars: Bartek, Gawin and Honorata. In plots where potato had been treated with herbicides and herbicides mixed with biostimulants, a decline in the fresh matter of weeds was observed, ranging from 72.4% to 96.1%, which was followed by an increase in potato marketable yield (from 27.5% to 61%) and improved parameters of S. tuberosum yield components, compared with the control. Linear correlation coefficients indicated that the following characteristics: marketable yield, weight of tubers per plant and average weight per tuber were associated with weed infestation determined prior to potato harvest.